Certificate of appealability
Document that allows an appeal of a denial of a writ
In the most common types of habeas corpus proceedings in the United States federal courts, a certificate of appealability is a legal document that must be issued before a petitioner may appeal from a denial of the writ. The certificate may only be issued when the petitioner has made a "substantial showing of the denial of a constitutional right".
The application may be made explicitly, but a notice of appeal made without a certificate of appealability is treated as an implicit application for the certificate. "To obtain a [certificate of appealability], the [petitioner] must make a request to a district or circuit court judge. In the application, the [petitioner] includes the issues he wishes to raise on appeal. In general, the application process is informal, there is no hearing, and the government rarely files a brief in response to the prisoner's request. The determination is simply made in chambers. If the district court judge denies the request, the [petitioner] may apply to the circuit judge. In addition, a notice of appeal to the circuit court can be treated as a request for a COA."
Under Rule 22 of the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure, "a certificate of appealability is not required when a state or its representative or the United States or its representative appeals." A certificate of appealability is also not required for petitioners seeking a writ of coram nobis; however, the writ of coram nobis is only available for those who are no longer in-custody (or on probation) and the issues raised in the petition could not have been known while the petitioner was in-custody.
The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 changed the procedures for issuing a certificate of appealability in federal court.
The public source identifies “Certificate of appealability” as document that allows an appeal of a denial of a writ. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Certificate, appealability and Document.
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This entry incorporates text from “Certificate of appealability” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.