United States v. Harris, No. 11-5072 (10th Cir. 2011)
Annotate this CasePro se prisoner Petitioner Efrem Harris sought to appeal a district court's dismissal of his post-judgment motions for lack of jurisdiction, and its denial of his Fed. R. Civ. P. 59(e) motion to alter or amend that dismissal. He petitioned the Tenth Circuit for a certificate of appealability (COA). In 2003, Petitioner was sentenced to life imprisonment for drug-trafficking offenses. He pursued a direct appeal and simultaneously filed his motion for post-conviction relief. At the time he prepared the motion, however, he did not realize the significance of the facts and so did not plead that constitutional claim. Therefore, he sought to reopen the judgment and amend his original post-conviction motion to include the claim, and to have the amended motion relate back to the original motion. The district court concluded that the motions attempted to assert unauthorized second or successive post-conviction relief claims, over which the court lacked jurisdiction to consider and therefore dismissed. Upon review, the Tenth Circuit found the district court did not err in its decisions, therefore the Court dismissed Petitioner's request for a COA and dismissed his appeal.
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