United States v. Solarin, No. 11-1032 (10th Cir. 2011)
Annotate this CasePro se prisoner Petitioner Frederick Solarin sought a certificate of appealability (COA) to appeal a district court’s dismissal of his motion for post-conviction relief. Petitioner was convicted of bank robbery and firearms charges, and sentenced to 244 months of imprisonment. He unsuccessfully raised three claims on appeal: (1) when he was suspected of the robbery and taken into state custody for an alleged parole violation, his custody really was an unconstitutional federal arrest without a warrant or probable cause; (2) he gave an involuntary confession because his arrest was illegal and agents were coercive in interrogating him; and (3) his counsel was ineffective. The district court denied the first claim for procedural default, concluding that he had not shown cause for failing to raise the claim on direct appeal. For the same reason, it also applied procedural default to the aspect of the second claim alleging that his confession was involuntary because his arrest was illegal. It denied the remainder of the second claim and the third claim on the merits. Upon review, the Tenth Circuit concluded "No reasonable jurist could debate whether the issues presented in Mr. Solarin’s motions were ‘adequate to deserve encouragement to proceed further.’" The Court denied Petitioner’s application for a COA.
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