Whether there is any remedy under Rule 60(b) for functional abandonment by counsel in a federal habeas proceeding, or whether there is no remedy for extreme failures by appointed counsel such that Rule 60(b) motions in this context must always be dismissed as successive habeas petitions under Gonzalez v. Crosby

When the district court received Petitioner ’s habeas corpus case, attorneys experienced in habeas and death penalty matters offered to accept appointment. The district court instead appointed counsel who later conceded they lacked experience in capital habeas cases. Appointed counsel proceeded to functionally abandon Petitioner . They failed to raise two claims from the direct appeal that only lost in state court by a narrow 3 -2 margin. They copied and-pasted 61 of the 76 pages of the petition straight from the direct appeal opinion and state post-conviction briefing. They raised claims without including any original legal work. And counsel made no arguments under 28 U.S.C. § 2254, the key legal standard in federal habeas. The magistrate and district judge recognized counsel’s failures. For example, the district judge said it was “difficult to find any original work product generated by federal habeas counsel” and observed that “counsel seem to expect the Court to make Petit ioner’s arguments for them.” But instead of exercising discretion to supervise or replace counsel, the district court used counsel’s failures against Petitioner as reasons to deny relief. New counsel later asked the district court, under Fed. R. Civ. P. 60(b), to reopen the judgment in light of a procedural defect: the functional abandonment by prior counsel and the district court’s failure to correct it. The district court, and then a pane l of the Fourth Circuit, held this was not a proper Rule 60(b) motion and dismissed it for lack of jurisdiction. The question presented is: Whether there is any remedy under Rule 60(b) for functional abandonment by counsel in a federal habeas proceeding, or whether there is no remedy for extreme failures by appointed counsel such that Rule 60(b) motions in this context must always be dismissed as successive habeas petitions under Gonzalez v. Crosby , 545 U.S. 524 (2005).