Opinion ID: 613858
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Due Process—Fair Warning

Text: Under Mr. Kirby’s next claim, he argues that his due-process rights were violated because he was not given fair warning of the statute’s scope. As the 4 In fact, Mr. Kirby raises several arguments for the first time on appeal, and nowhere in his briefing before this court does he assert that the plainerror standard should apply to these claims. Accordingly, as discussed throughout this Order, all of Mr. Kirby’s late-blooming challenges are clearly waived. 11 district court framed it, “Kirby attacks his state-court fraud conviction on the grounds that he was convicted of a new and novel principle of law in violation of due process that neither the statute nor any prior judicial decision has fairly disclosed to be within the statute’s scope.” R., Vol. I, at 916 (Mem. Op. & Order Adopting Magistrate Judge’s Proposed Findings & Recommended Disposition, filed Dec. 30, 2010) (internal quotation marks omitted). “This ‘novel principle,’ according to Kirby, is the principle that the designer of web pages may be found to be the owner of the website on which they are displayed.” Id.; see Aplt. Combined Br. at 11 (arguing that he was not given “fair warning . . . in language a person of ordinary intelligence would [understand] that a webpage designer would own the website they designed the pages for”). Mr. Kirby presented this challenge in his state post-conviction proceedings. The New Mexico Supreme Court—“having considering [Mr. Kirby’s] petition, and being sufficiently advised [on the matter]”—denied his due-process challenge. R., Vol. I, at 94 (Order, dated Aug. 8, 2008). Applying AEDPA deference, the district court (adopting the magistrate judge’s recommendation) held that the New Mexico Supreme Court’s adjudication of this claim was neither contrary to nor an unreasonable application of Supreme Court precedent. 5 Id. at 5 The magistrate judge concluded, and the district court agreed, that “[t]he New Mexico Supreme Court’s disposition of Kirby’s state habeas petition, though summary, qualifies as a disposition on the merits and is therefore entitled to deferential review.” R., Vol. I, at 876 (citing Aycox v. Lytle, 196 F.3d 1174, (continued...) 12 879, 919. Before this court, Mr. Kirby has utterly failed to demonstrate that he is entitled to relief—that is, he has not shown “that reasonable jurists would find the district court’s assessment of the [due process] claim[] debatable or wrong.” Slack, 529 U.S. at 484. In his combined brief, Mr. Kirby spends three pages laying out what he deems to be the applicable legal framework for his due-process challenge, citing the holdings of both the Supreme Court and the Tenth Circuit. However, he does not even attempt to explain why he is entitled to relief under that framework, and he makes no effort to specifically discuss the district court’s resolution of this claim, much less explain how reasonable jurists could debate the correctness of that resolution. This is insufficient to carry his burden. Specifically, Mr. Kirby’s conclusory assertion that his due-process rights were violated—without any factual foundation or legal analysis to support his claim—does not entitle him to relief. See, e.g., Walker v. Gibson, 228 F.3d 1217, 5 (...continued) 1177–78 (10th Cir. 1999)). In Aycox, we noted that “a summary decision . . . can constitute an ‘adjudication on the merits’ for purposes of § 2254(d), provided that the decision was reached on substantive rather than procedural grounds.” 196 F.3d at 1177. This is particularly true where “[t]here is no evidence . . . that the state court did not consider and reach the merits of [the petitioner’s] claim.” Id. In this case, the New Mexico Supreme Court’s explicitly stated that it had “considered” and “be[en] sufficiently advised [on]” the issue before denying it, R., Vol. I, at 94, and there is no indication that the denial was based on procedural grounds. Furthermore, Mr. Kirby does not object to the district court’s characterization of the New Mexico Supreme Court’s decision. Accordingly, the district court properly applied AEDPA’s deferential standard of review to this claim. 13 1240 (10th Cir. 2000) (stating that “unsupported and undeveloped [habeas] issues” do not entitle a petitioner to relief (quoting Moore v. Gibson, 195 F.3d 1152, 1180 n.17 (10th Cir. 1999)) (internal quotation marks omitted)), abrogated on other grounds by Neill v. Gibson, 278 F.3d 1044 (10th Cir. 2001). Accordingly, he is not entitled to a COA on this issue.