holding that this court “need 2 USCA4 Appeal: 22-6882 Doc: 8 Filed: 01/20/2023 Pg: 3 of 3 not issue a [certificate of appealability] before determining whether the district court erred in dismissing [a defendant’s] purported Rule 60(b) motion as an unauthorized successive habeas petition”
How later courts described this case
- holding that this court “need 2 USCA4 Appeal: 22-6882 Doc: 8 Filed: 01/20/2023 Pg: 3 of 3 not issue a [certificate of appealability] before determining whether the district court erred in dismissing [a defendant’s] purported Rule 60(b) motion as an unauthorized successive habeas petition”
- holding that no certificate of appealability is required when a Rule 60(b) motion is dismissed as successive because “[n]o one can say right now whether McRae's habeas proceeding was with merit or without based on the district court’s dismissal”
- holding that certificate of appealability is not required to appeal district court’s categorization of Rule 60(b
- holding that no COA is required for the appeal of a dismissal of a Rule 60(b) motion on jurisdictional grounds
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
WYNN, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
Not wholly unlike the issue we confronted in Blakely v. Wards, 738 F.3d 607, 617 (2013) (en banc), where the “nub of the majority’s and dissent’s disagreement [was] the term dismiss,” today, we disagree about whether dismissals and denials can be conflated for purposes of Certificates of Appealability.. Fittingly to this case, in Blakely our dissenting colleague viewed the word dismiss as having a very narrow and distinct definition “learned in the first year of law school.” Id. at 626 (Motz, J., dissenting). That narrow definition could be overcome neither by “imprecise common usage” nor by “an overbroad dictionary definition.” Id. Applying that sentiment here, there must be a distinction between “actual dismissals” and denials. Id. Otherwise, we run the risk of “improp *402 erly restricting] access to the courts.”- Id. at 624 . With great respect to the dissenting view, I must therefore agree with the majority opinion.