Edward S. Phillips v. Matthew Plummer, Warden

Under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA), when a habeas corpus petitioner seeks to initiate an appeal of the dismissal of a habeas corpus petition, the right to appeal is governed by the certificate of appealability (COA) requirements found at 28 U. S. C. § 2253(c). In Slack v. McDaniel, 529 U. S. 473 (2000), this Court held: “Where a district court has rejected the constitutional claims on the merits, the showing required to satisfy § 2253(c) is straightforward: The petitioner must demonstrate that reasonable jurists would find the district court’s assessment of the constitutional claims debatable or wrong.” Id., at 484. The principal question presented is whether the Seventh Circuit has so far departed from the rule of law established in Slack, and/or sanctioned such a departure from this rule of law by the Southern District of Illinois, as to call for an exercise of this Court’s supervisory power, per S. Ct. R. 10(a).