Whether a criminal defendant’s right to be present at all critical stages of trial includes the right to be present for a trial court’s response to ajury’s request for additional instructions.

Whether a defendant must show that his presence during the trial court’s response to a jury’s request for additional instructions would have changed the outcome of trial.

Whether a district court’s fact finding that counsel was absent during a critical stage of trial should be reviewed for clear error.

1. Whether the Due Process Clause of the Four-

teenth Amendment permits a state court to dismiss

an appeal as untimely where a litigant complied with

the Court’s established procedures for reporting elec-

tronic system failures, including obtaining a certificate

of waiver, but the Court nonetheless refused to accept

the filing and denied appellate review of federal claims?

2. Whether a state court’s refusal to accept a

| certificate of waiver documenting electronic filing system failure, resulting in dismissal of an appeal as untimely, :

: violates the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth

Amendment by denying meaningful access to appellate

| review?

1. Whether 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1) exceeds Congress’s authority under the Commerce Clause, facially and as applied to intrastate firearm possession?!

2. Whether 18 U.S.C. § 922(¢)(1) is subject to as-applied challenges and violates the Second Amendment as applied to a defendant whose prior felony convictions are nonviolent?’

1 This Commerce Clause question is pending in Storey v. United States, No. 25-7216 (response requested May 26, 2026).

2 Other petitions presenting Second Amendment questions in § 922(¢g)(1) prosecutions are pending before this Court, including in United States v. Hembree, No. 25-1219 (distributed for conference of September 28, 2026), and Swan v. United States, No. 26-26 (petition filed July 2, 2026).

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U.S. Supreme Court Original Jurisdiction and Habeas Corpus Jurisdiction

| 1. Will the United States Supreme Court and its individual justices use it’s rare and discretionary ex parte original jurisdiction, under section 14 of the Judiciary Act of 1789, Ex parte Yerger, 75 U.S. 85 (1868), and 28 U.S.C. 2441 (c) (2), to review and directly hear in the first instance Carla and Jalen’s original writ of habeas corpus petition and attached evidence documents under the following exceptional circumstances: |

a. When President George W. Bush, his Executive Branch, in business contract with the State of Kansas and United States corporations, put the

| personal liberty and life of Carla and Jalen under restraint using the U.S.A. Patriot Act of 2001 Section 215 to seize their medical records, acting as Original Classification Authority to classify Carla and Jalen’s personal health information (PHI) at a “Confidential” level, and | indefinitely denying Carla and Jalen access and use of their PHI in medical records for any fundamental purpose as a human being since January 23, 2003, at present, and into the future; | b. When Carla and Jalen have physical document threshold evidence of executive restraint on their personal liberty and life in the form of exhibit | | medical documents attached to this petition with “Confidential Not For Re-Release “and “Denied Disclosure” classified markings; c. When Carla and Jalen are indefinitely denied access and use of their PHI while having private pay health insurance benefits on January 23, 2003,

d. When the United States District Court for the District of Kansas is not a neutral tribunal due to its: contractual, business, and financial, involvement in the matter, fiduciary loyalties, false allegations of Carla, and attempted abduction of Jalen?

AEDPA imposes a one-year statute of limitations on federal habeas petitions filed by state prisoners. 28 U.S.C. § 2244(d)(1). That period is tolled, however, while a “properly filed application for State post-conviction or other collateral review” is pending. § 2244(d)(2). For pro se prisoners, whose ability to deposit court papers depends on the prison mail system, the date a state postconviction motion is “filed” is often dispositive of whether the federal habeas petition will be heard at all.

In Houston v. Lack, 487 U.S. 266 (1988), this Court held that a pro se prisoner’s federal court papers are deemed filed when delivered to prison authorities for mailing. But that straightforward rule has split the circuits over a variation on the theme. Different circuits come to different conclusions about whether Houston governs when a state postconviction motion 1s “filed” under § 2244(d)(2), or whether— as the Sixth Circuit held below—only state filing rules govern, leaving federal habeas timeliness to depend entirely on the procedural choices each State has made.

The question presented is:

Does state or federal law govern the date a pro se prisoner’s state

postconviction motion is “filed” for purposes of tolling AEDPA’s one-year

limitations period under 28 U.S.C. § 2244(d)(2)?

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1. In Boutie v. City of Columbia, 378 U.S. 347 (1964), this Court recognized a right of fair warning against an unforeseeable and retroactive judicial expansion of a criminal statute. Is that right limited exclusively to cases concerning the scope of criminal liability, or does it include cases involving the calculation of a defendant’s sentence?

2. In Olano v. United States, 507 U.S. 725 (1993), this Court set out the four prongs of analysis for plain-error review. Where a district court’s error results in a sentence that the court would not have otherwise imposed, may the appellate court find plain-error review satisfied without considering Olano’s fourth prong?

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