UNPUBLISHED UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT

No. 21-7547

SHANNON DEVANTE COOPER, Petitioner - Appellant, v. MICHAEL STEPHAN, Warden, Respondent - Appellee.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of South Carolina, at Aiken.

J. Michelle Childs, District Judge. (1:20-cv-04185-JMC)

Submitted: March 24, 2022 Decided: March 29, 2022

Before MOTZ, WYNN, and RICHARDSON, Circuit Judges.

Dismissed by unpublished per curiam opinion.

Christopher Reginald Geel, GEEL LAW FIRM, LLC, Charleston, South Carolina, for Appellant. William Edgar Salter, III, Assistant Attorney General, OFFICE OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL OF SOUTH CAROLINA, Columbia, South Carolina, for Appellee.

Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit.

PER CURIAM: Shannon DeVante Cooper seeks to appeal the district court’s order accepting the recommendation of the magistrate judge and denying relief on Cooper’s 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 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 Cooper 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