United States of America v. Maliek Kearney

UNPUBLISHED
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT
No. 23-7030
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff - Appellee,
v.
MALIEK KEARNEY,
Defendant - Appellant.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Maryland, at Baltimore.
George L. Russell, III, District Judge. (1:16-cr-00486-GLR-1; 1:21-cv-03149-GLR)
Submitted: January 30, 2024 Decided: February 6, 2024
Before KING, AGEE, and THACKER, Circuit Judges.
Dismissed by unpublished per curiam opinion.
Maliek Kearney, Appellant Pro Se.
Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit.

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PER CURIAM:
Maliek Kearney seeks to appeal the district court’s orders denying relief on his
28 U.S.C. § 2255 motion and denying reconsideration.∗ The orders are not appealable
unless a circuit justice or judge issues a certificate of appealability. See 28 U.S.C.
§ 2253(c)(1)(B). 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 motion 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)).
Limiting our review of the record to the issues raised in Kearney’s informal brief,
we conclude that Kearney has not made the requisite showing. See 4th Cir. R. 34(b);
Jackson v. Lightsey, 775 F.3d 170, 177 (4th Cir. 2014) (“The informal brief is an important
document; under Fourth Circuit rules, our review is limited to issues preserved in that
brief.”). Accordingly, we deny Kearney’s motion for preparation of the record on appeal,
deny a certificate of appealability, and dismiss the appeal. We dispense with oral argument
∗ Although the district court improperly construed Kearney’s timely Fed. R. Civ.
P. 59(e) motion as an unauthorized, successive § 2255 motion, see Banister v. Davis, 140
S. Ct. 1698, 1702 (2020), this error does not affect the resolution of this appeal.

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

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