Sealey v. Warden, Ga. Diagnostic Prison

1

RICHARD L SEALEY, Petitioner-Appellant, v. WARDEN, GEORGIA DIAGNOSTIC PRISON, Respondent-Appellee.

No. 22-11040

United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit

August 25, 2023

DO NOT PUBLISH

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia D.C. Docket No. 1:14-cv-00285-MLB

Before JORDAN, JILL PRYOR, and NEWSOM, Circuit Judges.

PER CURIAM

Condemned Georgia inmate Richard Sealey moved the district court to reopen his federal habeas proceedings following our decision in Nance v. Comm'r, Ga. Dep't of Corr., 981 F.3d 1201 (11th Cir. 2020), in which we held that certain execution-related claims should be pursued in habeas corpus proceedings rather than in civil suits brought under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. The district court denied his motion and, not long thereafter, the Supreme Court reversed our decision in Nance. See Nance v. Ward, 142 S.Ct. 2214 (2022). We AFFIRM the district court's denial.

I

A Georgia jury convicted Sealey of malice murder on the ground that he tortured a woman with a hot fireplace poker and then killed her and her husband with an axe. Sealey v. Warden Ga. Diagnostic Prison, 954 F.3d 1338, 1344-45 (11th Cir. 2020). After Sealey unsuccessfully pursued appellate and state post-conviction remedies, he filed a federal habeas corpus petition. Id. at 1349-53. The district court denied his petition and, in 2020, we affirmed that denial. Id. at 1344-45. As relevant here, the district court concluded in the course of that litigation that Sealey's challenges to his execution by lethal injection were not cognizable in habeas and that if he intended to pursue them he would have to do so through a suit filed under 42 U.S.C § 1983. Doc. 66 at 100-01. In particular, the court stated that it understood Sealey's petition to challenge the constitutionality of Georgia's specific "lethal injection procedures," an allegation that it held belonged in § 1983 under our then-governing precedent. Id. (citing Tompkins v. Secretary, Dep't of Corr., 577 F.3d 1257, 1261 (11th Cir. 2009)) ("A § 1983 lawsuit, not a habeas proceeding, is the proper way to challenge lethal injection procedures."). We didn't review that aspect of the district court's decision because the certificate of appealability didn't cover it.

In 2021, Sealey moved the district court to reopen his federal habeas proceedings on the ground, he said, that new circuit precedent-in particular, our then-recent decision in Nance, 981 F.3d 1201-rendered his lethal-injection claim cognizable in habeas. The condemned inmate in Nance had argued that his unique medical condition would make his execution by lethal injection cruel and unusual, and he proposed the firing squad as an alternative means of carrying out his death sentence. Nance, 981 F.3d at 1203. The complication, we observed in our decision, was that lethal injection was the only method of execution authorized by Georgia law. Id. at 1210. We held that because Nance's challenge, if successful, would deprive Georgia of the ability to execute him under existing law, it "necessarily impl[ied] the invalidity of his death sentence" and thus belonged in habeas. Id. at 1210-11 (citing, e.g., Heck v. Humphrey, 512 U.S. 477 (1994)).

The district court denied Sealey's motion to reopen. It concluded that our decision in Nance didn't move Sealey's claim from the § 1983 to the habeas bucket because he "did not raise a methodof-execution challenge that, if successful, would prevent his execution by lethal injection in any form." Doc. 92 at 4.

Not long after the district court denied Sealey's motion, the Supreme Court reversed our decision in Nance. See 142 S.Ct. 2214. In so doing, the Court held that even if Nance's proposed alternative method of execution "necessitate[d] a change in state law," his claim nonetheless sounded in § 1983 because his "requested relief still places his execution in Georgia's control"-the state, the Court held, could simply change its law. Id. at 2223. Nance's challenge therefore did not "necessarily imply the invalidity" of his sentence. Id. at 2222 (quoting Heck, 512 U.S. at 487).

Sealey then moved the district court to set aside its order in light of the Supreme Court's decision in Nance and to reopen his habeas proceedings or, in the alternative, to amend its certificate of appealability to include the question whether his execution-related claim was cognizable in habeas.^[1] The district court denied the motion to set aside its order but issued a new COA that included Sealey's cognizability argument.

II

At the outset, we hold that Sealey's "motion to reopen"- which he predicated on a contention that the underlying law governing the cognizability of certain execution-related claims in habeas had changed-is properly understood as a Rule 60(b) motion to set aside the district court's earlier judgment. See Fed.R.Civ.P. 60(b) (providing circumstances in which a court "may relieve a party or its legal representative from a final judgment, order, or proceeding").^[2] That tees up a second issue: Was Sealey's motion a an unauthorized-and thus forbidden-"second or successive" habeas corpus petition?^[3]

Under the Supreme Court's decision in Gonzalez v. Crosby, a Rule 60(b) motion is tantamount to a successive habeas petition only if, as relevant here, it attacks a previous court's resolution of a claim "on the merits." 545 U.S. 524, 532 (2005) (emphasis in original). Accordingly, the question for us is whether, in concluding that the type of execution-related claim that Sealey seeks to pursue is not "cognizable" in habeas-but rather only under 42 U.S.C. § 1983- the district court adjudicated that claim "on the merits." We conclude that it did not.

The Gonzalez Court recognized that "[t]he term 'on the merits' has multiple usages," but it clarified that in the habeas context the controlling question is whether the district court's original judgment constituted "a determination that there exist or do not exist grounds entitling a petitioner to habeas corpus relief under 28 U.S.C. § 2254(a) and (d)." Id. at 532 n.4. "When," the Court continued, "a movant asserts one of those grounds (or asserts that a previous ruling regarding one of those grounds was in error) he is making a habeas corpus claim." Id. The "grounds" specified in § 2254(a) and (d), in turn, pertain to the substance of the underlying law that governs the propriety of the inmate's conviction or sentence-that is, whether either "violat[es] the Constitution or laws or treaties of the United States," 28 U.S.C. § 2254(a), or rests on a state-court decision that "was contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of clearly established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States," or "was based on an unreasonable determination of the facts in light of the evidence presented in the State court proceeding," id. § 2254(d)(1)-(2). See also Gonzalez, 545 U.S. at 533 (observing that a Rule 60(b) needn't be "treated like a habeas corpus application" if "neither the motion itself nor the federal judgment from which it seeks relief addresses federal grounds for setting aside the movant's state conviction"); id. at 538 (holding that a Rule 60(b) petition "is not to be treated as a successive habeas petition if it does not assert, or reassert, claims of error in the movant's state conviction").

The district court's conclusion here that the type of claim that Sealey seeks to litigate isn't "cognizable" in habeas, but must instead be pursued under § 1983, is different from a determination that Sealey's particular claim fails "on the merits," as that phrase is used in this context. Cf. also Amodeo v. FCC Coleman-Low Warden, 984 F.3d 992, 1002-03 (11th Cir. 2021) (distinguishing between a claim's "merit" and "cognizability"); Restatement (First) of Judgments § 49 cmt. a ("[W]here there is a judgment for the defendant on the ground that the plaintiff sued in the wrong form of action, the judgment is not on the merits.").^[4]

In sum, we hold that Sealey's 60(b) motion was not a successive habeas petition because it didn't attack a prior judgment "on the merits." We needn't opine on "cognizability" holdings generally; all that matters in the particular circumstances of this case is that the district court's determination that Sealey's claim wasn't cognizable in habeas wasn't a judgment "on the merits" in the way that Gonzalez used that phrase.

III

We review a district court's denial of a Rule 60(b) motion for abuse of discretion. Howell v. Secretary, Fla Dep't of Corr., 730 F.3d 1257, 1260 (11th Cir. 2013). We hold that the district court did not err-let alone abuse its discretion-in holding that Sealey's particular claim sounds in § 1983 rather than in habeas.

Without definitively determining the precise scope of the Supreme Court's decision in Nance, it's fair to say that it leaves habeas a fairly circumscribed role in execution-related challenges. To be sure, an inmate claiming that, for whatever reason, the state may not constitutionally execute him at all-say, because capital punishment is per se unconstitutional, because there is no known valid method of execution (which perhaps amounts to the same thing), or because he is categorically ineligible for the death penalty-may, and perhaps must, proceed in habeas. And we can even assume, for the sake of argument, that a frontal challenge to a particular method of execution-for instance, that lethal injection in any form is unconstitutional-may proceed in habeas.

But-and this is dispositive-fairly read, that's not the sort of challenge that Sealey has alleged. He certainly hasn't claimed that the state may not execute him by any means. Nor, we think, has he contended that lethal injection itself is...