Repeat court petitions by prisoners

1. Is a second-in-time habeas petition claim not successive if there is a legitimate excuse for the failure to raise the claim within the first petition, under the Court’s long-standing abuse-of-the-writ doctrine (McCleskey v. Zant, 499 U.S. 467 (1991), reaffirmed post-AEDPA in Banister v. Davis, 590 U.S. 504 (2020)); or, is a non-successive second-in-time habeas petition limited to where a claim: a) challenges a new state-court judgment; b) was unripe when the first petition was filed; or c) was unexhausted and not decided, although raised, within the first petition? 2. Does “factual predicate,” and thus ripeness, when determining whether a federal habeas claim is not successive, mean a fact necessary to overcome summary dismissal of an underlying constitutional claim or does the “factual predicate” exist, and thus the claim is ripe, solely because the claim relates to conduct (or lack of conduct) at an early stage of proceedings, even though the fact necessary to overcome summary dismissal did not then exist?