Along with everything collapsing in state court, I was hit with another blow when the Fourth Circuit denied my petition for rehearing and rehearing en banc. The order was one sentence. There was no explanation. There was no acknowledgment of the factual errors I had identified. There was no recognition of the constitutional consequences created by the panel’s earlier mischaracterizations. It simply said the petition was denied and that no judge requested a poll.
This was not just dismissive. It was a violation of stare decisis. Stare decisis is the bedrock requirement that courts must follow their own precedent and the precedent of higher courts when the same legal question is raised again. It exists so the law remains stable, predictable, and legitimate. Without it, the entire structure of common law collapses because rulings become arbitrary and unrestrained. Their denial did not apply any prior mandamus precedent, including the Fourth Circuit’s own decisions in Murphy-Brown, Lockheed Martin, or Sewell, all of which recognize that mandamus relief is appropriate when a district court refuses to act or creates constitutional harm. Their order simply ignored all of it.
They also claimed my only option was to petition the Supreme Court for certiorari. But I could not do that because the factual basis of their opinion was wrong. The Supreme Court does not correct factual error. It reviews legal questions. If I submitted a cert petition based on the record the Fourth Circuit created, the petition would rest on false statements attributed to me. The panel had claimed I was attempting to overturn district court rulings even though I never used that word anywhere in my petitions. They claimed I identified no basis for mandamus relief even though I presented five separate grounds across dozens of pages. They claimed there was no undue delay even though delay was not the basis for relief and I explicitly stated that the harm was obstruction, retaliation, denial of access, and the inability to serve defendants.
I reached a point where I had one option left. A hail Mary.
I filed a motion to amend the opinion because there is a procedure called recalling a mandate. But because this was an original proceeding, there was technically no mandate to recall. So I relied on the federal statute I cited in the motion, which gives appellate courts the authority to modify or correct any judgment if needed to prevent injustice. My motion laid out that authority in detail. It also relied on Rule Two of the Appellate Rules, which allows the court to suspend its own procedural rules for a good cause to correct an error. I explained that both provisions applied because the opinion misstated my filings and created constitutional consequences that blocked me from accessing any remedy at all.
The Clerk then issued a letter trying to block the filing, claiming I was attempting to seek reconsideration. That was false. I was not asking them to reconsider their ruling. I was asking them to fix their factual errors so that the record would be accurate. If they wanted to stand by the order after that, they could, but they had to provide a reasoned explanation because they were violating their own precedent and stare decisis requires a court to explain any departure from its prior decisions.
So I had to file another motion stating that the Clerk had no authority to block the filing. Only the Court can determine whether something is properly before it. My response lays this out clearly in the introduction and states that the motion was ancillary to any potential certiorari petition because the Supreme Court cannot review a case built on factual errors. I explained that the record must be corrected first and that blocking the motion would create manifest injustice.
The lengths I am having to go to just get the record corrected is chilling because it’s on the record. I mean these aren’t simply how I “view ” it or my opinion. It creating a false record – I mean how is that not considered fraud? Especially considering I literally put in the mandamus that I was aware of the fact the judge I was asking them to instruct to do his job and have to call out his abuse had close ties to the circuit court. I mean honestly, where have the moral principles of our justice gone?