Cite as: 517 U. S. 314 (1996)
Opinion of the Court
sume that Lonchar could not be denied a stay unless his petition was properly subject to dismissal. See App. 62, 63-64; 58 F. 3d, at 593. The concurrence argues that the Court's decision in Gomez v. United States Dist. Court for Northern Dist. of Cal., supra, displaced the rationale of Barefoot, relying particularly on the statement that a "court may consider the last-minute nature of an application to stay execution in deciding whether to grant equitable relief." 503 U. S., at 654. The concurrence understands this statement to authorize denial of a stay, for generalized equitable reasons, in first federal habeas cases, even when the district court lacks authority to dismiss the petition on the merits. We do not believe this sentence, or the rest of the Court's order in Gomez, supports this conclusion.
First, Gomez did not involve denial of a stay in a case in which the lower court had no authority to dismiss the petition. Instead, as the concurrence concedes, post, at 338, the case could have been dismissed as an "abuse of the writ." See 503 U. S., at 653-654. Second, Gomez involved a fifth attempt to secure collateral review, not a first habeas petition. Barefoot indicated that stays in "[s]econd and successive federal habeas corpus petitions present a different issue," since in such cases it is more likely that " 'a condemned inmate might attempt to use repeated petitions and appeals as a mere delaying tactic,' " and because this danger is specially recognized and addressed in the Habeas Corpus Rules. Barefoot, supra, at 895. Finally, the concurrence's reading of Gomez seriously conflicts with Barefoot's well-settled treatment of first habeas petitions. We decline to adopt such a far-reaching interpretation of this per curiam order, especially since Gomez did not concern a first habeas petition, and since the Gomez order did not discuss (or even cite) Barefoot, much less explicitly repudiate its rationale.
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