Ellis

MEMORANDUM *

Ezzard Charles Ellis, convicted of murder in California in 1991, is currently serving a life sentence. On June 14, 2005, he filed his first federal habeas corpus petition. The district court dismissed the petition as untimely and Ellis appealed. For the reasons set forth below, we reverse and remand for further fact-finding to resolve whether the petition was timely filed.

In April 2003, Ellis claims he received a newspaper article from which he learned for the first time that his trial counsel had been racially biased against his co-defendant’s counsel. While he acknowledges he knew of the deficiencies in his attorney’s *722 trial performance at the time of conviction, he claims he did not know they were attributable to racial animus until he received the article. In August 2003, he filed a habeas corpus petition in California Superior Court arguing that his attorney’s bias violated his Sixth Amendment right to conflict-free counsel. His petition was dismissed as untimely and meritless. The California Court of Appeal and California Supreme Court summarily denied Ellis’s subsequent habeas petitions. Ellis filed his federal habeas petition three months after the…