United States Court of Appeals

for the Fifth Circuit

No. 20-20516

Trenton LeTroy Jackson, 

Petitioner—Appellant,

versus

Bobby Lumpkin, Director, Texas Department of Criminal Justice, 

Correctional Institutions Division, 

Respondent—Appellee.

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Southern District of Texas

USDC No. 4:09-cv-3656

Before Jolly, Willett, and Oldham, Circuit Judges.

Andrew S. Oldham, Circuit Judge:

Trenton LeTroy Jackson murdered his three-year-old daughter. A 

Texas state court sentenced him to life imprisonment. We have twice refused 

to authorize Jackson’s successive habeas petitions under 28 U.S.C. 

§ 2244(b)(3). This appeal asks whether the district court properly 

interpreted Jackson’s motion for relief from the judgment under Rule 60(b) 

as another successive habeas petition. We answer yes and affirm. 

United States Court of Appeals

Fifth Circuit

FILED

February 7, 2022

Lyle W. Cayce

Clerk

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I.

In 2004, a Texas jury convicted Jackson of murder. After exhausting 

state-law mechanisms for challenging his conviction, he filed a habeas 

petition in federal court in 2009. See 28 U.S.C. § 2254. The district court 

dismissed that petition as time-barred under the one-year statute of 

limitations in the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 

(“AEDPA”). See 28 U.S.C. § 2244(d). Jackson did not appeal that ruling.

Jackson subsequently moved this court for authorization to file two 

successive habeas petitions, arguing that he had uncovered new evidence and 

that the prosecutor had presented false testimony. Two different panels of 

our court denied Jackson’s motions. In re Jackson, No. 20-20137, ECF No. 

13-2 (Apr. 1, 2020); In re Jackson, No. 20-20480, ECF No. 20-2 (Nov. 27, 

2020). In denying his second motion for authorization, we warned Jackson 

against the further “filing of repetitive and frivolous motions.” No. 

20-20480, ECF No. 20-2, at 2. 

On April 28, 2020, Jackson moved for relief from the judgment in the 

district court under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60(b)(6). He again 

argued that new evidence supported his innocence and that his conviction 

should be overturned due to ineffective assistance of counsel and the 

prosecutor’s use of false testimony. He also argued that his claim of actual 

innocence could overcome § 2244(d)’s limitations period under McQuiggin 

v. Perkins, 569 U.S. 383 (2013).

The district court held that Jackson’s Rule 60(b) motion was in 

substance a successive habeas petition. The court therefore recharacterized 

the motion and found that it lacked jurisdiction absent our prior authorization 

under 28 U.S.C. § 2244(b). The court then transferred the case to us so we 

could consider whether to issue that authorization. See 28 U.S.C. § 1631.

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Jackson timely appealed the district court’s transfer order. We have 

previously held that such transfer orders are appealable under the collateral 

order doctrine. In re Bradford, 660 F.3d 226, 229 (5th Cir. 2011) (per curiam).

And our precedent dictates that Jackson may appeal the district court’s 

transfer order without a certificate of appealability. United States v. Fulton, 

780 F.3d 683, 688 (5th Cir. 2015). Our review is de novo. United States v. 

Villarreal, 723 F.3d 609, 610 (5th Cir. 2013) (per curiam). 

II. 

The only question presented is whether the district court correctly 

interpreted Jackson’s Rule 60(b) motion as a disguised and otherwise-barred 

successive habeas petition. It did.

The Supreme Court’s decision in Gonzalez v. Crosby, 545 U.S. 524 

(2005), controls our analysis. There, the Court considered the possibility that 

state prisoners could use Rule 60(b) motions to evade AEDPA’s limitations

on successive habeas petitions.* The Court held that Rule 60(b) motions 

which present habeas “claims,” see 28 U.S.C. § 2244(b), should be treated

as successive habeas petitions subject to the strictures of § 2244(b). 

Gonzalez, 545 U.S. at 531. Otherwise, “use of Rule 60(b) would 

impermissibly circumvent the requirement that a successive habeas petition 

be precertified by the court of appeals as falling within an exception to the 

successive-petition bar.” Id. at 532. 

How are courts to decide whether a Rule 60(b) motion presents a 

habeas “claim”? The Gonzalez Court focused on whether the motion “seeks 

* Rule 60(b) allows a party to ask the district court for relief “from a final judgment, 

order, or proceeding” based on grounds that include “excusable neglect,” “newly 

discovered evidence,” “misconduct by an opposing party,” and “any other reason that 

justifies relief.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 60(b). 

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to add a new ground for relief” or “attacks the federal court’s previous 

resolution of a claim on the merits.” Ibid. It gave three examples of motions 

that qualify: first, a motion seeking leave to bring a new claim of constitutional 

error that was previously omitted due to “excusable neglect”; second, a 

motion seeking leave to present newly discovered evidence in support of a 

claim previously argued; and third, a motion seeking relief based on a 

subsequent change in substantive law. See id. at 530–31 (quotation omitted). 

These are all quintessential habeas claims, and petitioners may not use Rule 

60(b) to evade AEDPA’s limits on their cognizability. On the other hand, 

the Court clarified that a movant is not making a habeas claim “when he 

merely asserts that a previous ruling which precluded a merits determination 

was in error—for example, a denial for such reasons as failure to exhaust, 

procedural default, or statute-of-limitations bar.” Id. at 532 n.4; cf. Brannigan 

v. United States, 249 F.3d 584, 588 (7th Cir. 2001) (distinguishing different 

habeas “claims”).

Jackson’s Rule 60(b) motion argued that new evidence demonstrates 

his counsel’s ineffectiveness and shows that his conviction was 

constitutionally infirm. He also argued that the prosecutor violated his due 

process rights by presenting false testimony. But we have repeatedly held, 

relying on Gonzalez, that this kind of argumentation is “fundamentally 

substantive” and presents “paradigmatic habeas claim[s].” In re Coleman, 

768 F.3d 367, 372 & n.17 (5th Cir. 2014) (per curiam) (quotation omitted); 

see also, e.g., Runnels v. Davis, 746 F. App’x 308, 315 (5th Cir. 2018); In re 

Jasper, 559 F. App’x 366, 371 (5th Cir. 2014). The district court thus properly 

characterized Jackson’s Rule 60(b) motion as a successive habeas petition.

Jackson responds by pointing to footnote 4 of Gonzalez. There the 

Court stated that a Rule 60(b) motion does not present a habeas claim if it

“merely asserts that a previous ruling which precluded a merits 

determination was in error—for example, a denial for such reasons as failure 

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to exhaust, procedural default, or statute-of-limitations bar.” 545 U.S. at 532 

n.4. But Jackson has no basis to argue that the district court’s 2010 ruling that 

his first § 2254 petition was time-barred “was in error.” Ibid. Instead he 

argues that, armed with new evidence, he can now make a substantial 

showing of his actual innocence and thus escape § 2244(d)’s limitations 

period under McQuiggin. That has nothing to do with the correctness of the 

district court’s 2010 statute-of-limitations ruling. It has everything to do with 

“presenting new evidence in support of . . . claim[s] already litigated”—

specifically, Jackson’s ineffectiveness and due process claims, which he has

already litigated at length. Id. at 531. And according to Gonzalez, a Rule 60(b) 

motion “presenting new evidence in support of a claim already litigated” is

a paradigmatic example of a disguised successive § 2254 petition. Ibid.

Jackson separately argues that the district court must consider his 

Rule 60(b) motion under McQuiggin. That case held that a first-time federal 

habeas petitioner could overcome § 2244(d)’s limitations period by making 

a convincing showing of his actual innocence. McQuiggin, 569 U.S. at 386. 

But McQuiggin specifically distinguished second-or-successive petitions like 

the one at issue here:

Sections 2244(b)(2)(B) and 2254(e)(2) thus reflect Congress’

will to modify the miscarriage of justice exception with respect 

to second-or-successive petitions and the holding of 

evidentiary hearings in federal court. These provisions do not 

demonstrate Congress’intent to preclude courts from applying 

the exception, unmodified, to “the type of petition at issue 

here”—an untimely first federal habeas petition alleging a 

gateway actual-innocence claim. The more rational inference 

to draw from Congress’ incorporation of a modified version of 

the miscarriage of justice exception in §§ 2244(b)(2)(B) and 

2254(e)(2) is simply this: In a case not governed by those 

provisions, i.e., a first petition for federal habeas relief, the 

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miscarriage of justice exception survived AEDPA’s passage 

intact and unrestricted.

Id. at 396–97. Put simply, McQuiggin recognized that AEDPA does eliminate 

the “miscarriage of justice” exception for second-or-successive petitioners 

like Jackson. 

* * *

The district court properly recharacterized Jackson’s Rule 60(b) 

motion as a successive habeas petition and transferred it to this court to 

consider whether it met the precertification criteria in 28 U.S.C. 

§ 2244(b)(3). AFFIRMED.

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