Garry Artis Yarborough v. Leslie Cooley Dismukes, Secretary, North Carolina Department of Adult Correction

Whether the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeal’s departed from the "accepted and usual course of judicial proceedings," Supreme Court Rule 10 (a) in a manner warranting this Courts supervisory review, by denying a certificate of appealability (COA) in a one- paragraph, unpublished per curiam order that neither engaged Petitioner’s substantial constitutional questions and record evidence, thereby effectively applying a more stringent standard than that required by this Court’s precedents, nor applied this Court’s " relatively low" threshold requiring only that reasonable jurists could debate the district court’s resolution, as articulated in Miller- El v. Cockrell, 537 U.S. 322, 336-37 (2003), Slack v. McDaniel, 529 U.S. 473 (2000), and Buck v Davis, 580 U.S. 100 (2017).

Whether the recurring practice among courts of appeals of summarily denying COAs in unpublished orders, without meaningful engagement with the “debatable among jurists of reason” standard, undermines the gatekeeping function of 28 U.S.C. § 2253(c) and forecloses appellate review of substantial constitutional claims, warranting this Court’s intervention to ensure uniform application of its precedents and to resolve an important federal question under Rule 10(a)(c). 3. Whether the courts below unreasonably applied clearly established federal law and made an unreasonable determination of the facts, in violation of 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d), by rejecting petitioner’s claim of ineffective assistance of counsel where trial counsel’s failure to file a required motion to sever was not a strategic decision but the result of ignorance of controlling law, and where the record included unrefuted admissions by counsel and expert testimony establishing deficient performance and prejudice.

Whether the Fourth Circuit’s summary disposition conflicts with its own precedent requiring consideration of whether an unfiled pretrial motion had “some substance” and was likely meritorious and outcome­ affecting, thus risking disuniformity within the circuit and justifying certiorari under Rule 10(a).