Background
Raymond Johnson, an Oklahoma prisoner serving a forty-year sentence for armed robbery, filed a federal habeas petition under twenty-eight U.S.C. section two thousand two hundred fifty-four. He claimed actual innocence and ineffective assistance of counsel, arguing that an investigating officer planted a soda bottle at the crime scene. The district court dismissed the petition as untimely, finding that Johnson failed to present new evidence to satisfy the actual innocence exception to the one-year statute of limitations.
The court’s reasoning
To obtain a certificate of appealability, a petitioner must make a substantial showing of the denial of a constitutional right. The court applied the standard that reasonable jurists must be able to debate whether the petition should have been resolved differently. The court found that Johnson’s evidence was not new because it consisted of screenshots pulled from surveillance footage that was already admitted at trial. Consequently, the court concluded that reasonable jurists could not debate the district court’s determination that Johnson failed to satisfy the actual innocence exception.
What it means going forward
The denial of the certificate of appealability prevents Johnson from appealing the district court’s dismissal of his habeas petition on the merits. The matter is dismissed, leaving the state conviction and sentence in place.