USCA1 Opinion

      [NOT FOR PUBLICATION--NOT TO BE CITED AS PRECEDENT]

                 United States Court of Appeals

                     For the First Circuit











No. 97-2408



           AEDAN C. MCCARTHY, a/k/a JAMES LEE HARDIMAN,

                     a/k/a JOHN EDWARD PERRY,



                      Petitioner, Appellant,



                                v.



                    UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,



                      Respondent, Appellee.







           APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT



                    FOR THE DISTRICT OF MAINE



           [Hon. D. Brock Hornby, U.S. District Judge]







                              Before



                     Selya, Stahl and Lynch,

                        Circuit Judges.

                                

                                





     Aedan McCarthy on brief pro se.

     Jay P. McCloskey, United States Attorney and Margaret D.

McGaughey, Assistant United States Attorney on brief for appellee.











December 18, 1998







                                

                                





     

     Per Curiam.  Petitioner Aedan C. McCarthy was convicted of

bank robbery and firearms offenses and sentenced as an armed career

criminal.  See U.S.S.G.  4B1.4 (1993).  We affirmed his

convictions and sentence.  United States v. McCarthy, 77 F.3d 522

(1st Cir.), cert. denied, 117 S. Ct. 479 (1996).

     McCarthy now appeals the district court's denial of his

subsequent motion, filed pursuant to 28 U.S.C.  2255, only insofar

as the district court refused to hold his  2255 motion in abeyance

while McCarthy seeks to vacate prior convictions in state courts

that were the basis for his sentence as an armed career criminal. 

Although that  2255 motion raised claims about his federal

convictions, which were resolved by the district court and are no

longer pursued by McCarthy, McCarthy, in addition, sought to raise

an, as yet, unripe claim regarding his status as an armed career

criminal.  Concerned about the one year period of limitation in 

2255 imposed by the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act

of 1996, Pub. L. No. 104-132, tit. I,  105 (1996), McCarthy

included this unripe claim in his  2255 motion, but asked the

court to hold his motion in abeyance pending the outcome of his

state court collateral attacks.

     We find no abuse of discretion in the district court's refusal

to hold the  2255 motion in abeyance.  In the event that McCarthy

succeeds in vacating his state court convictions, his contention

that the Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA) is inapplicable to him

would become ripe.  It would appear that, in that event and at that

time, he could seek to reopen this  2255 proceeding and obtain a

                                 

district court adjudication of that previously-raised claim.  See

Stewart v. Martinez-Villareal, 118 S. Ct. 1618, 1621-22 (1998)

(holding that a claim presented in a first habeas petition and

dismissed as premature could be adjudicated once it became ripe

under the same standard as would govern claims made in a first

petition); see also United States v. Pettiford, 101 F.3d 199 (1st

Cir. 1996) (holding that once a defendant succeeds in vacating

underlying state court convictions, the ACCA is no longer

applicable to the defendant's federal sentencing computation and he

is entitled to be resentenced).

     The judgment of the district court is, therefore, affirmed.