John Gray v. Warden of Jessup Correctional Institution; Maryland Attorney General

UNPUBLISHED
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT
No. 21-7695
JOHN GRAY,
Petitioner - Appellant,
v.
WARDEN OF JESSUP CORRECTIONAL INSTITUTION; MARYLAND ATTORNEY
GENERAL,
Respondents - Appellees.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Maryland, at Baltimore.
Ellen Lipton Hollander, Senior District Judge. (1:20-cv-01976-ELH)
Submitted: November 30, 2022 Decided: June 23, 2023
Before GREGORY, Chief Judge, AGEE, Circuit Judge, and KEENAN, Senior Circuit
Judge.
Dismissed by unpublished per curiam opinion.
John Gray, Appellant Pro Se. Andrew John DiMiceli, Assistant Attorney General,
OFFICE OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL OF MARYLAND, Baltimore, Maryland, for
Appellees.
Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit.

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PER CURIAM:
John Gray seeks to appeal the district court’s orders denying his motions for a
certificate of appealability and for reconsideration relating to his petition construed
under 28 U.S.C. § 2254. The orders are not appealable unless a circuit justice or judge
issues a certificate of appealability. See 28 U.S.C. § 2253(c)(1)(A). 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). When the district court denies relief on the merits, a
prisoner satisfies this standard by demonstrating that reasonable jurists could find the
district court’s assessment of the constitutional claims debatable or wrong. See Buck v.
Davis, 580, U.S. 100, 115-17 (2017). When the district court denies relief on procedural
grounds, the prisoner must demonstrate both that the dispositive procedural ruling is
debatable and that the petition states a debatable claim of the denial of a constitutional
right. Gonzalez v. Thaler, 565 U.S. 134, 140-41 (2012) (citing Slack v. McDaniel, 529 U.S.
473, 484 (2000)).
We have independently reviewed the record and conclude that Gray has not made
the requisite showing. Gray’s appeal is essentially duplicative of his appeal in Gray v.
Warden of Jessup Corr. Inst., No. 21-4279, 2021 WL 4902350 (4th Cir. Oct. 21, 2021), in
which we denied a certificate of appealability and dismissed the appeal of the district
court’s order denying relief on Gray’s § 2254 petition. Accordingly, while we grant Gray’s
pending motion to supplement his informal brief, we deny a certificate of appealability and
dismiss his appeal as moot. We dispense with oral argument because the facts and legal

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contentions are adequately presented in the materials before this court and argument would
not aid the decisional process.
DISMISSED

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