Ranieri

MEMORANDUM **

California state prisoner Stephen J. Ranieri appeals the district court’s dismissal of his petition for habeas corpus under 28 U.S.C. § 2254 . He challenges his conviction, after a jury trial, for attempted murder and assault with a firearm. His sole claim on appeal is that the district court erred in holding that the California Su *599 preme Court’s citation to In re Clark, 5 Cal.4th 750 , 21 Cal.Rptr.2d 509 , 855 P.2d 729 (1993), set forth an adequate and independent state ground for rejecting his state petition for habeas relief. A state prisoner is barred from presenting a claim in a federal habeas petition if he forfeited the claim by failing to abide by independent and adequate procedural rules in state court. Coleman v. Thompson, 501 U.S. 722, 729-30 , 111 S.Ct. 2546 , 115 L.Ed.2d 640 (1991).

After exhausting his direct appeal, Ranieri filed in the California Supreme Court a series of three habeas corpus challenges to his conviction. The court denied the last of those petitions by citing the timeliness rule of Clark . The district court held that this citation expressed an adequate and independent reason for the state court’s rejection of the petition. The…