Hassan Ahmed Nur v. HAROLD CLARKE, Director of D.O.C.

UNPUBLISHED
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT
No. 21-6930
HASSAN AHMED NUR,
Plaintiff - Appellant,
v.
HAROLD CLARKE, Director of D.O.C.,
Defendant - Appellee,
and
UNKNOWN,
Defendant.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, at
Alexandria. Claude M. Hilton, Senior District Judge. (1:20-cv-01584-CMH-JFA)
Submitted: February 17, 2022 Decided: February 22, 2022
Before AGEE and RUSHING, Circuit Judges, and SHEDD, Senior Circuit Judge.
Dismissed by unpublished per curiam opinion.
Hassan Ahmed Nur, Appellant Pro Se.
Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit.

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PER CURIAM:
Hassan Ahmed Nur seeks to appeal the district court’s order dismissing without
prejudice Nur’s initial letter construed as a 28 U.S.C. § 2254 petition for failure to use the
court’s standardized forms in compliance with the local court rules, failure to exhaust his
state court remedies, and duplicating the action by filing a subsequent § 2254 petition.*
The order is 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, 137 S. Ct. 759, 773-74
(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 Nur has not made the
requisite showing. Accordingly, we deny Nur’s motion for a certificate of appealability
and dismiss the appeal. We dispense with oral argument because the facts and legal
* We conclude that the district court’s order is final and appealable because the
defects identified by the district court must be cured by something more than an
amendment to the allegations in the § 2254 petition. See Bing v. Brivo Systems, LLC, 959
F.3d 605, 610 (4th Cir. 2020), cert. denied, 141 S. Ct. 1376 (2021).

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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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