Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca10-16-08031/USCOURTS-ca10-16-08031-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Chester Loyde Bird
Appellant
Wyoming Attorney General
Appellee
Wyoming Department of Corrections State Penitentiary Warden
Appellee

Document Text:

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS 

FOR THE TENTH CIRCUIT 

 

CHESTER LOYDE BIRD, 

 Petitioner - Appellant, 

v. 

WYOMING DEPARTMENT OF 

CORRECTIONS STATE 

PENITENTIARY WARDEN; 

WYOMING ATTORNEY GENERAL, 

 Respondents - Appellees. 

No. 16-8031 

(D.C. No. 2:98-CV-00183-WFD) 

(D. Wyo.)

 

ORDER DENYING CERTIFICATE OF APPEALABILITY*

 

Before TYMKOVICH, Chief Judge, BRISCOE and HARTZ, Circuit Judges. 

 

Chester Bird, a Wyoming state prisoner proceeding pro se, seeks a certificate 

of appealability (COA) to appeal the district court’s decision construing his 

Fed. R. Civ. P. 60(b) motion as an unauthorized second-or-successive 28 U.S.C. 

§ 2254 petition and dismissing it for lack of jurisdiction. We deny a COA and 

dismiss this matter. 

 

* This order is not binding precedent except under the doctrines of law of the 

case, res judicata, and collateral estoppel. It may be cited, however, for its 

persuasive value consistent with Fed. R. App. P. 32.1 and 10th Cir. R. 32.1. 

FILED 

United States Court of Appeals 

Tenth Circuit 

June 30, 2016

Elisabeth A. Shumaker 

Clerk of Court

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 In 1994, Mr. Bird pled guilty to one count of first-degree sexual assault and 

one count of kidnapping and was sentenced to two concurrent life sentences. Over 

the last two decades, Mr. Bird has filed numerous motions in state court seeking to 

withdraw his guilty plea and challenge the legality of his sentence, but the Wyoming 

Supreme Court has upheld his convictions and sentence. Mr. Bird has been equally 

unsuccessful in federal court: the district court has denied four petitions for habeas 

relief against the Wyoming Department of Corrections, and this court has denied four 

applications for a COA and one motion to file a second-or-successive § 2254 

petition. 

Relevant here, Mr. Bird filed a § 2254 petition in 1998. The district court 

denied the petition and dismissed the case in 1999, and we denied Mr. Bird’s 

application for a COA. See Bird v. Everett, No. 99-8108, 2000 WL 717089, at *1 

(10th Cir. June 2, 2000). In December 2015, Mr. Bird filed a motion under 

Fed. R. Civ. P. 60(b)(6), seeking relief from the district court’s 1999 dismissal order. 

On March 21, 2016, the district court concluded that the Rule 60(b) motion 

constituted an attempt to file a second-or-successive § 2254 motion without prior 

authorization and dismissed the motion for lack of jurisdiction. The district court 

also concluded that it was not in the interests of justice to transfer the motion to this 

court because Mr. Bird did not assert a meritorious claim. Mr. Bird now seeks a 

COA to appeal from the district court’s March 21, 2016, order. 

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To obtain a COA, Mr. Bird must show that “jurists of reason would find it 

debatable whether the district court was correct in its procedural ruling.” Slack v. 

McDaniel, 529 U.S. 473, 484 (2000). A prisoner may not file a second-or-successive 

§ 2254 petition unless he first obtains an order from the circuit court authorizing the 

district court to consider the petition. 28 U.S.C. § 2244(b)(3)(A). Absent such 

authorization, a district court lacks jurisdiction to address the merits of a 

second-or-successive § 2254 petition. In re Cline, 531 F.3d 1249, 1251 (10th Cir. 

2008) (per curiam). 

A prisoner’s post-conviction filing, however entitled, should be treated as a 

second-or-successive § 2254 petition if it seeks to present new claims for relief from 

a state court’s judgment of conviction, Gonzalez v. Crosby, 545 U.S. 524, 531 

(2005), and does not “seek[] to correct an error in the previously conducted habeas 

proceeding itself,” United States v. Nelson, 465 F.3d 1145, 1147 (10th Cir. 2006). 

A Rule 60(b) motion may not be treated as a second-or-successive § 2254 petition if 

it challenges “a procedural ruling of the habeas court which precluded a merits 

determination of the habeas application” or “a defect in the integrity of the federal 

habeas proceeding,” as long as “such a challenge does not itself lead inextricably to a 

merits-based attack on the disposition of a prior habeas petition.” Spitznas v. Boone, 

464 F.3d 1213, 1215-16 (10th Cir. 2006). 

 In his Rule 60(b) motion, Mr. Bird argued that (1) the state sentencing judge 

misstated the maximum sentence before Mr. Bird entered his guilty plea, and (2) the 

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Wyoming Supreme Court committed a procedural error by applying the wrong 

standard of review during his first appeal. He thus asserted a basis for relief from his 

underlying convictions and did not raise a claim about a procedural ruling of the 

habeas court or a defect in the integrity of his federal habeas proceeding, as 

contemplated by Gonzalez and Spitznas. 

Reasonable jurists could not debate that the district court was correct in its 

procedural ruling to treat Mr. Bird’s Rule 60(b) motion as an unauthorized 

second-or-successive § 2254 petition. Accordingly, we deny a COA and dismiss this 

matter. 

Entered for the Court 

ELISABETH A. SHUMAKER, Clerk 

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