Aaron Le Von Johnson v. Attorney General

[DO NOT PUBLISH] IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FILED FOR THE ELEVENTH CIRCUIT U.S. COURT OF APPEALS ________________________ ELEVENTH CIRCUIT OCT 20, 2008 No. 08-11589 THOMAS K. KAHN Non-Argument Calendar CLERK ________________________ D. C. Docket No. 06-00100-CV-3 AARON LE VON JOHNSON, Plaintiff-Appellant, versus ATTORNEY GENERAL THURBERT E. BAKER, JAMES E. DONALD, JACQUELINE BUNN, FRED BURNETTE, PAT ETHEREDGE, et al., Defendants-Appellees. ________________________ Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Georgia _________________________ (October 20, 2008) Before CARNES, BARKETT and PRYOR, Circuit Judges. PER CURIAM: Aaron Le Von Johnson, a state prisoner, appeals the dismissal of his complaint. See 42 U.S.C. § 1983. The district court dismissed for lack of subject matter jurisdiction Johnson’s collateral attack of the judgment of a state court. We affirm. We review de novo an issue of subject matter jurisdiction. Goodman ex. rel. Goodman v. Sipos, 259 F.3d 1327, 1331 (11th Cir. 2001). Under the Rooker- Feldman doctrine, an inferior federal court lacks subject matter jurisdiction to review either a final judgment of a state court or issues “inextricably intertwined” with that judgment. District of Columbia Ct. of App. v. Feldman, 460 U.S. 462, 486, 103 S. Ct. 1303, 1317 (1983); Rooker v. Fidelity Trust Co., 263 U.S. 413, 415–16, 44 S. Ct. 149, 150 (1923). An issue is “inextricably intertwined” with a judgment of a state court when a complaint “succeeds only to the extent that the state court wrongly decided the issues before it.” Siegel v. LePore, 234 F.3d 1163, 1172 (11th Cir. 2000) (en banc). For Johnson to succeed, a federal court would have to find an error in the judgment of the state court. Johnson complains that prosecutors violated his rights when they submitted a proposed order that contained allegedly false statements and conspired to have a state judge sign that order. Johnson’s complaint about that 2 signed order could have been raised in the state courts. The district court correctly dismissed Johnson’s complaint based on the Rooker-Feldman doctrine. AFFIRMED. 3