Opinion
23-6832
10-24-2023
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. JUAN SOTO, Defendant-Appellant.
Juan Soto, Appellant Pro Se.
UNPUBLISHED
Submitted: October 19, 2023
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina, at Raleigh. James C. Dever III, District Judge. (5:15-cr-00071-D-2)
Juan Soto, Appellant Pro Se.
Before KING and WYNN, Circuit Judges, and TRAXLER, Senior Circuit Judge.
Dismissed by unpublished per curiam opinion.
Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit.
PER CURIAM
Juan Soto seeks to appeal the district court's order denying his Fed.R.Civ.P. 60(b) motion seeking relief from the district court's criminal judgment. Soto's motion was, in substance, a 28 U.S.C. § 2255 motion. The district court's denial of relief on this motion is 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)).
We have independently reviewed the record and conclude that Soto has not made the requisite showing. In his Rule 60(b) motion, the claim Soto raised challenged the validity of one of his convictions, and, thus, the motion should have been construed as a successive § 2255 motion. See Gonzalez v. Crosby, 545 U.S. 524, 531-32 (2005); United States v. McRae, 793 F.3d 392, 397-99 (4th Cir. 2015). Absent prefiling authorization from this court, the district court lacked jurisdiction to entertain Soto's successive § 2255 motion. See 28 U.S.C. §§ 2244(b)(3), 2255(h). 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
The district court denied relief on Soto's initial § 2255 motion on the merits in 2019.