Rene Rivera v. Mark S. Inch, Secretary, Florida Department of Corrections, et al.
DueProcess HabeasCorpus
Whether the courts applied the correct standard of review in denying petitioner's application for certificate of appealability
QUESTIONS PRESENTED ‘ I, Did the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit and the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida apply an incorrect standard of review as established by this Court in Miller-El v. Cockrell, 537 U.S. 322 (2003), and Slack v. McDaniel, 529 U.S. 473 (2000), by denying Petitioner’s application for certificate of appealability based upon a finding that Petitioner “has failed to make a substantial showing of the denial of a constitutional right”? Il. Asa matter of first impression, where a defendant in a state criminal proceeding is handicapped by a language barrier as a foreign-born national, has intellectual deficiencies, and whose competency to proceed to trial was questioned on three separate occasions before and during trial, are the State of Florida’s . provision of law libraries alone adequate to ensure that indigent prisoners are able to file meaningful legal papers for post-conviction litigation; or do the Sixth and/or , Fourteenth Amendment protections to a fair trial and due process require the provision of post-conviction counsel? ij