Giurbino

MEMORANDUM ***

Johnnie Richmond petitions for review of the district court’s denial of his Petition for Writ of Habeas Corpus. Richmond pleaded no-contest to a charge of inflicting corporal injury on a spouse in the Los Angeles County Superior Court. The trial *435 court found the allegation that Richmond had suffered two prior serious or violent felony convictions within the meaning of California’s Three Strikes Law to be true. Richmond was sentenced to twenty-five years to life in state prison. We have jurisdiction pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2258 , and we affirm.

In his Petition, Richmond claimed that the district court erred under Morales v. Calderon, 85 F.3d 1387, 1392 (9th Cir.1996), in finding his first and third claims procedurally barred where the state court order was ambiguous. The district court determined that the California Supreme Court had denied Richmond’s claim on an independent and adequate state ground, and that this raised a procedural bar to Richmond’s pursuit of his claim in federal court. Richmond constructively filed a fourth state habeas petition, which the California Supreme Court denied for untimeliness with citations to In re Clark, 5 Cal.4th 750 , 21…