Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca4-09-07942/USCOURTS-ca4-09-07942-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Henry Chester
Appellant
United States of America
Appellee

Document Text:

UNPUBLISHED

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT

No. 09-7942

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

Plaintiff – Appellee,

v.

HENRY CHESTER, a/k/a Zeke,

Defendant – Appellant.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of 

South Carolina, at Florence. Cameron McGowan Currie, District 

Judge. (4:94-cr-00665-CMC-1)

Submitted: June 24, 2010 Decided: July 6, 2010

Before KING and GREGORY, Circuit Judges, and HAMILTON, Senior 

Circuit Judge.

Dismissed by unpublished per curiam opinion.

Henry Chester, Appellant Pro Se. Alfred William Walker Bethea, 

Jr., Assistant United States Attorney, Florence, South Carolina, 

for Appellee. 

Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit.

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PER CURIAM:

Henry “Zeke” Chester seeks to appeal the district 

court’s order treating his motion filed under Fed. R. Crim. P. 

36 as a successive 28 U.S.C.A. § 2255 (West Supp. 2010) motion, 

and dismissing it on that basis. The order is not appealable 

unless a circuit justice or judge issues a certificate of 

appealability. 28 U.S.C. § 2253(c)(1) (2006); see generally

Reid v. Angelone, 369 F.3d 363, 369 (4th Cir. 2004). 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) (2006). 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 Chester has not made the requisite showing. 

Accordingly, we deny a certificate of appealability and dismiss 

the appeal. We dispense with oral argument because the facts 

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and legal contentions are adequately presented in the materials 

before the court and argument would not aid the decisional 

process.

DISMISSED

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