Valdez

MEMORANDUM

Daniel Valdez appeals the district court’s dismissal of his habeas petition as time-barred under 28 U.S.C. § 2254 (d). Valdez contends that his petition was timely filed under AEDPA because the statute of limitations was tolled during the pen-dency of his state court habeas filings. Because we agree that Valdez’s petition was timely filed, we reverse and remand.

Valdez was convicted of possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, assault with a firearm, firing at an occupied motor vehicle, and exhibiting a firearm in a threatening manner to one in a motor vehicle in October of 1994, and he was sentenced to nineteen years imprisonment pursuant to California’s “three strikes” law on November 14, 1994. 2 He timely appealed his sentence, and the California Supreme Court denied direct review on May 22, 1996. Valdez filed a state habeas corpus petition challenging the constitutionality of his sentence in the California Court of Appeals on March 16, 1997 and it was denied on April 4, 1997. He then filed his state habeas corpus petition in the Califor *787 nia Supreme Court on July 20, 1997 and it was denied on November 25, 1997. Valdez then filed a state habeas corpus…

dissenting.

I respectfully dissent. The majority’s ruling opens the door to a never-ending spiral of habeas review. Nino v. Galaza, 183 F.3d 1003, 1004 (9th Cir.1999), limits tolling to “intervals between the state court’s disposition of a state habeas petition and the filing of a petition at the next state appellate level” (emphasis added). Daniel Valdez’s petition in Superior Court following the Supreme Court’s denial of his state petition does not fit within the Nino rubric. For that reason, I would affirm the district court’s dismissal of Valdez’s petition.