United States v. Anthony Harris ( 2016 )

UNPUBLISHED
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT
No. 16-6106
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff - Appellee,
v.
ANTHONY VONN HARRIS, a/k/a Anthony Vonne Harris,
Defendant - Appellant.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Middle
District of North Carolina, at Greensboro. Thomas D. Schroeder,
District Judge. (1:10-cr-00289-TDS-1; 1:13-cv-00232-TDS-JEP)
Submitted: June 23, 2016 Decided: June 28, 2016
Before MOTZ, KING, and WYNN, Circuit Judges.
Dismissed by unpublished per curiam opinion.
Anthony Vonn Harris, Appellant Pro Se. Clifton Thomas Barrett,
Harry L. Hobgood, Angela Hewlett Miller, Assistant United States
Attorneys, Greensboro, North Carolina, for Appellee.
Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit.
PER CURIAM:
Anthony Vonn Harris seeks to appeal the district court’s
order accepting the recommendation of the magistrate judge and
denying relief on his 28 U.S.C. § 2255 (2012) motion. The order
is not appealable unless a circuit justice or judge issues a
certificate of appealability. 28 U.S.C. § 2253(c)(1)(B) (2012).
A certificate of appealability will not issue absent “a
substantial showing of the denial of a constitutional right.”
28 U.S.C. § 2253(c)(2) (2012). When the district court denies
relief on the merits, a prisoner satisfies this standard by
demonstrating that reasonable jurists would find that the
district court’s assessment of the constitutional claims is
debatable or wrong. Slack v. McDaniel, 529 U.S. 473, 484
(2000); see Miller-El v. Cockrell, 537 U.S. 322, 336-38 (2003).
When the district court denies relief on procedural grounds, the
prisoner must demonstrate both that the dispositive procedural
ruling is debatable, and that the motion states a debatable
claim of the denial of a constitutional right. Slack, 529 U.S.
at 484-85.
We have independently reviewed the record and conclude that
Harris has not made the requisite showing. * Accordingly, we deny
* Specifically, the district court’s dispositive conclusion
— that our decision in United States v. Mungro, 754 F.3d 267(4th Cir. 2014), foreclosed Harris’ argument that the Supreme
(Continued)
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a certificate of appealability and dismiss the appeal. We
dispense with oral argument because the facts and legal
contentions are adequately presented in the materials before
this court and argument would not aid the decisional process.
DISMISSED
Court’s holding in Johnson v. United States, 135 S. Ct. 2551(2015), invalidated his armed career criminal designation — is
not debatable.
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