William John Easterling v. United States

Whether a court of appeals denies due process and exceeds the limited certificate-of-appealability inquiry required by Slack v. McDaniel, 529 U.S. 473 (2000), and Buck v. Davis, 580 U.S. 100 (2017), when it denies a COA by conducting a full merits and prejudice review of a constitutional claim that the district court never adjudicated. Whether the omission of an essential jurisdictional element from a federal indictment constitutes a structural defect requiring automatic reversal, rather than harmless-error or prejudice review, under the Fifth Amendment Grand Jury Clause and this Court s treatment of omitted-element cases, an issue this Court expressly left open in United States v. ResendizPonce, 549 U.S. 102 (2007). Whether the government must prove the federal nexus as a separate jurisdictional fact, where the Sixth Circuit's contrary reading treats mens rea for the offense as satisfying the interstate-commerce nexus in conflict with United States v. Terrell, 700 F.3d 755 (5th Cir. 2012), and violates the fair-warning, lenity, and federalism principles recognized in United States v. Lopez, 514 U.S. 549 (1995), and United States v. Morrison, 529 U.S. 598 (2000). -2- 26A130 -3- Whether a court of appeals may apply a prejudice or harmless-error standard to a conceded structural defect in a grand jury indictment, in tension with Stirone v. United States, 361 U.S. 212 (1960) and the rule adopted in other circuits. Whether a court of appeals may deny COA while ignoring or improperly foreclosing claims of ineffective assistance of trial and appellate counsel for failing to raise a conceded structural defect in the indictment. -3- 26A13O -4-