Whether a habeas petitioner can obtain Rule 60(b) relief despite a prior adjudication on the merits

QUESTIONS PRESENTED This habeas corpus case, involving former Missouri death row inmate William Weaver, comes before this Court a second time. In Roper v. Weaver, 550 U.S. 698 (2007), this Court, after briefing and oral argument, dismissed the Writ of Certiorari it had previously granted that was filed by the State of Missouri as improvidently granted, which had the effect of upholding the Eighth Circuit’s previous decision granting penalty phase relief to petitioner based upon improper closing arguments by the prosecution. In so doing, this Court noted that the District Court erroneously dismissed petitioner’s pre-AEDPA habeas corpus petition by finding that petitioner had to exhaust his state remedies by way of a petition for a writ of certiorari from his consolidated state court appeal before filing his habeas corpus petition. Id. at 601; See also Lawrence v. Florida, 549 U.S. 327 (2007). As a result of this erroneous ruling, all of petitioner’s claims that were rejected in his first habeas corpus petition were erroneously subjected to the more stringent standard of review provisions of 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d) and (e) of the AEDPA. After he was resentenced to life imprisonment in 2014, petitioner filed a Rule 60(b) motion in the District Court under Gonzalez v. Crosby, 545 U.S. 524 (2005), urging the court to set aside its judgment denying relief on petitioner’s claims so his Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79 (1986) claim could later be reexamined de novo in light of Roper, Lawrence, and Buck v. Davis, 137 S.Ct. 759 (2017). The District Court denied the motion and denied a Certificate of Appealability (COA). After filing a notice of appeal and filing an application for a COA in the Eighth Circuit, the Court of Appeals, as is their custom in both capital and non-capital cases, issued a three line unexplained denial of the application and dismissed the appeal. In light of the foregoing facts, this petition presents the following questions: 1. Does this Court’s decision in Gonzalez v. Crosby completely foreclose a habeas petitioner from obtaining Rule 60(b) relief arising from a demonstrable defect in the prior proceedings if, as a result, the District Court will ultimately be required to reexamine some of petitioner’s constitutional claims that were previously adjudicated on the merits. 2. Whether the grounds raised by petitioner in his appeal from the denial of his Rule 60(b) motion presented issues upon which reasonable jurists could differ concerning the correctness of the District Court’s decision, which required the issuance of a COA. 3. Whether the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals’ standard practice of issuing unexplained blanket denials of COAs in both capital and noncapital habeas corpus cases improperly obstructs and constrains this Court’s discretionary review of its decisions.