Trevee Gethers v. Bryan Stirling, No. 20-6850 (4th Cir. 2021)
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UNPUBLISHED UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT No. 20-6850 TREVEE GETHERS, Petitioner - Appellant, v. BRYAN STIRLING, Commissioner, South Carolina Department of Corrections; RANDALL WILLIAMS, Warden of Lieber Correctional Institution, Respondents - Appellees. Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of South Carolina, at Aiken. Sherri A. Lydon, District Judge. (1:19-cv-01088-SAL) Submitted: March 18, 2021 Decided: March 22, 2021 Before WILKINSON and RICHARDSON, Circuit Judges, and SHEDD, Senior Circuit Judge. Dismissed by unpublished per curiam opinion. Elizabeth Anne Franklin-Best, ELIZABETH FRANKLIN-BEST, P.C., Columbia, South Carolina, for Appellant. Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit. PER CURIAM: Trevee Gethers, a South Carolina inmate, seeks to appeal the district court’s order accepting the recommendation of the magistrate judge and denying relief on Gethers’ counseled 28 U.S.C. § 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 would 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 Gethers has not made the requisite showing. Accordingly, we deny a certificate of appealability and dismiss the appeal. We dispense with oral argument because the facts and legal contentions are adequately presented in the materials before this court and argument would not aid the decisional process. DISMISSED 2
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