UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS 

FOR THE TENTH CIRCUIT 

_________________________________ 

VICTORIA DAWN WRIGHT, 

 Petitioner-Appellant, 

v. 

RYAN LONG; CYNTHIA H. 

COFFMAN, Attorney General of the 

State of Colorado, 

 Respondents-Appellees. 

No. 18-1111 

(D.C. No. 1:17-CV-2937-LTB) 

(D. Colo.) 

_________________________________ 

ORDER

_________________________________ 

Before BACHARACH, MURPHY, and MORITZ, Circuit Judges. 

_________________________________ 

Ms. Victoria Wright seeks a certificate of appealability so that she 

can appeal the dismissal of her application for habeas relief. Underlying 

the desired appeal is the scope of a district court’s discretion to dismiss an 

action based on the claimant’s failure to timely comply with a court order. 

Ms. Wright is a state prisoner who filed an application for habeas 

relief. She could pursue the application only by prepaying the filing fee or 

obtaining leave to proceed in forma pauperis; Ms. Wright opted to move in 

district court for leave to proceed in forma pauperis. 

With her motion, Ms. Wright submitted an institutional account 

statement reflecting transactions from February 2011 to August 2017. But 

FILED 

United States Court of Appeals 

Tenth Circuit 

August 7, 2018

Elisabeth A. Shumaker 

Clerk of Court
2 

Ms. Wright filed the habeas application over four months after the latest of 

these transactions. Thus, the district court sent Ms. Wright an order 

directing her to submit an account statement showing the current balance 

in her institutional account. In this order, the court stated that a failure to 

submit the account statement within thirty days would result in dismissal 

of the action without further notice. 

Ms. Wright was transferred to another prison, so the court sent the 

order to her again on January 10, 2018, restarting the thirty-day period. 

The court warned her again that failure to comply within thirty days would 

result in dismissal of the action without further notice. After thirty days 

passed without a response, the district court dismissed Ms. Wright’s 

application for habeas relief. Afterward, Ms. Wright submitted a response. 

But the district court declined to consider the response because it was 

untimely. 

Ms. Wright challenges this ruling, arguing that her response was 

timely because she had mailed it within thirty days of her receipt of the 

order. In our view, however, no reasonable jurist would credit this 

argument because Ms. Wright needed to comply within thirty days of the 

date that the order had been issued, not received. 

We will grant a certificate of appealability only if the district court’s 

dismissal is subject to reasonable debate. Slack v. McDaniel, 529 U.S. 473, 

484 (2000). To decide if the dismissal is reasonably debatable, we conduct 
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a preliminary review of Ms. Wright’s argument based on what she would 

ultimately need to show a merits panel. See Buck v. Davis, 137 S. Ct. 759, 

774 (2017). Here the required showing would entail an abuse of discretion. 

AdvantEdge Bus. Grp., L.L.C. v. Thomas E. Mestmaker & Assocs., Inc., 

552 F.3d 1233, 1236 (10th Cir. 2009). 

No reasonable jurist would view the district court’s ruling as an 

abuse of discretion. As the court reasoned, Ms. Wright’s response was 

untimely under any conceivable counting rules. On January 10, 2018, the 

district court ordered compliance within “thirty (30) days from the date of 

this minute order.” Minute Order at 1, Wright v. Long, No. 17-cv-02937-

GPG (D. Colo. Jan. 10, 2018), ECF No. 14 (emphasis omitted). Under this 

order, the last day to respond was February 9, 2018. Ms. Wright put her 

response in the mail five days after the 30-day deadline. Therefore, any 

reasonable jurist would consider her response untimely. 

Ms. Wright argues that she had 30 days from the day that she 

received the order. If she were right, the 30-day period would have started 

on January 15 rather than January 10. But the order set its deadline “thirty 

(30) days from the date of this minute order,” not from the date of receipt 

of the minute order. Id. In light of the wording in the order, all reasonable 

jurists would consider Ms. Wright’s response untimely. See In re 

Armstrong, 99 F. App’x 866, 868–69 (10th Cir. 2004) (unpublished) 
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(rejecting as untimely a filing because the filer had five days from the 

order’s date of filing rather than service). 

Ms. Wright invokes the prison mailbox rule. This rule provides some 

leeway for inmate filings, but it does not affect the start of the thirty-day 

period. Under the rule, inmate filings can be timely if they are “given to 

prison officials for mailing prior to the filing deadline” even if the court 

receives the filings after the deadline. Price v. Philpot, 420 F.3d 1158, 

1164 (10th Cir. 2005) (emphasis added). The prison mailbox rule does not 

affect the start date when the court gives a prisoner a certain number of 

days to file something. Cf. Jenkins v. Burtzloff, 69 F.3d 460, 461–62 (10th 

Cir. 1995) (holding that the prison mailbox rule does not apply to the start 

of the period for filing a notice of appeal). 

Because the prison mailbox rule is facially inapplicable, no 

reasonable jurist could consider the ruling an abuse of discretion. As a 

result, we decline to issue a certificate of appealability. In the absence of a 

certificate, we must also dismiss the appeal. See 28 U.S.C. 

§ 2253(c)(1)(B). 

In addition to the dismissal, however, we must decide whether to 

grant Ms. Wright’s motion for leave to proceed in forma pauperis. Granting 

this motion would relieve Ms. Wright of her obligation to prepay the filing 

fee for the appeal. This time, she has provided an updated account 
5 

statement, which shows an inability to prepay the filing fee. Therefore, we 

grant her motion for leave to proceed in forma pauperis in the appeal. 

 Entered for the Court 

 Robert E. Bacharach 

 Circuit Judge