Ulysses Charles Sneed v. Terry Raybon, Warden

By statute, a state prisoner is entitled to appeal the denial of his constitutional claims for federal habeas relief if he can show “that ‘jurists of reason could disagree with the district court’s resolution of his constitutional claims or that jurists could conclude the issues presented are adequate to deserve encouragement to proceed further.’” Buck v. Davis, 580 U.S. 100, 115 (2017) (quoting Miller-El v. Cockrell, 537 U.S. 322, 327 (2003)). As this Court has clarified, this standard does not call for review of the merits of a prisoner’s claims—indeed, it forbids it. Id.; Miller-El, 537 U.S. at 335-36. And where “a” single “circuit justice or judge” finds that this standard is met, 28 U.S.C. § 2253(c)(1), a certificate of appealability (COA) must issue and an appeal allowed. In this capital case, after making multiple findings on the merits of petitioner’s Sixth Amendment ineffective assistance claims, a single Eleventh Circuit judge ruled that he had failed to meet the COA standard. But Judge Adalberto Jordan, dissenting from the denial of reconsideration of that ruling, explained why, in light of the record, petitioner had met the standard and declared that he would grant a COA. Here, not only “could” reasonable Circuit judges “disagree” over the district court’s denial of habeas relief—they did.