Tholmer

MEMORANDUM **

Lionell Earnest Tholmer 1 appeals the district court’s denial of habeas corpus relief pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2254 . Six issues have been certified for appeal by the district court, all relating to one controlling legal issue — whether Tholmer’s second petition for habeas corpus was properly dismissed as an abuse of the writ.

In November 1985, a California sheriffs deputy discovered a severely burned dead body, later identified as John Meadows. Meadows had been shot in the head twice, and his body doused with gasoline and ignited. Contemporaneously with the discovery of Meadows’s body, Tholmer began communicating with a Sacramento police detective for whom Tholmer had previously worked as an informant. Tholmer told the detective that John Meadows murdered a woman named Cynthia Sparpana. Tholmer also related that Meadows was a child molester and that Sparpana had rejected Meadows’s sexual advances.

Authorities eventually obtained a warrant for Tholmer’s arrest in connection with the Meadows murder. Tholmer had fled the state and was arrested on December 9, 1985, in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Tholmer waived extradition, was flown back to California and placed in…