United States v. Trevor Reed

UNPUBLISHED UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT No. 14-7891 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff - Appellee, v. TREVOR REED, Defendant - Appellant. No. 15-6240 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff - Appellee, v. TREVOR REED, Defendant - Appellant. Appeals from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina, at Raleigh. J. Frederick Motz, Senior District Judge. (5:11-cr-00353-M-1; 5:14-cv-00502-M) Submitted: August 21, 2015 Decided: September 3, 2015 Before NIEMEYER, SHEDD, and AGEE, Circuit Judges. Dismissed by unpublished per curiam opinion. Trevor Reed, Appellant Pro Se. Evan Rikhye, Assistant United States Attorney, Seth Morgan Wood, OFFICE OF THE UNITED STATES ATTORNEY, Raleigh, North Carolina, for Appellee. Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit. 2 PER CURIAM: In these consolidated cases, Trevor Reed seeks to appeal the district court’s order dismissing his second 28 U.S.C. § 2255 (2012) motion as successive (No. 14-7891) and the district court’s order denying Reed’s Fed. R. Civ. P. 60(b) motion to set aside the order denying his first 28 U.S.C. § 2255 motion (No. 15-6240). These orders are 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 Reed has not made the requisite showing. Accordingly, we deny a certificate of appealability and dismiss the appeals. We 3 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 4