Dorian Frank O'Kelley v. Warden, Georgia Diagnostic Prison

USCA11 Case: 23-12947 Document: 70-1 Date Filed: 10/27/2026 Page: 1 of 36 FOR PUBLICATION In the United States Court of Appeals For the Eleventh Circuit ____________________ No. 23-12947 ____________________ DORIAN FRANK O'KELLEY, Petitioner-Appellant, versus WARDEN, GEORGIA DIAGNOSTIC PRISON, Respondent-Appellee. ____________________ Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Georgia D.C. Docket No. 4:15-cv-00104-WTM ____________________ Before ROSENBAUM, NEWSOM, and BRASHER, Circuit Judges. NEWSOM, Circuit Judge: Dorian Frank O’Kelley, a Georgia inmate sentenced to death, appeals the denial of his petition for a writ of habeas corpus. In his petition, O’Kelly presented nine claims comprising some 60 USCA11 Case: 23-12947 Document: 70-1 Date Filed: 10/27/2026 Page: 2 of 36 2 Opinion of the Court 23-12947 separate subclaims. The district court dismissed six of those sub- claims, several sua sponte, on the ground that they were insuffi- ciently pleaded under Rule 2(c) of the Rules Governing § 2254 Cases, and then subsequently denied O’Kelley’s motion for leave to amend. The issue before us is a narrow one. Our task isn’t to decide whether, in the abstract, it would have been preferable for the dis- trict court to notify O’Kelley of its intent to dismiss his subclaims for insufficient pleading and offer him an opportunity to correct the deficiencies. Perhaps it would have been. Instead, the sole ques- tion we must decide is whether, in the circumstances presented, the United States Constitution required the district court to do so. We hold that it did not. Accordingly, we affirm the denial of O’Kel- ley’s petition. I A The Georgia Supreme Court’s decision on direct appeal re- counts the particularly horrifying facts of O’Kelley’s crimes: The evidence presented at trial shows that, shortly before midnight on April 10, 2002, O’Kelley and his co-defendant, Darryl Stinski, were observed at a convenience store by two Chatham County po- lice officers. . . . Shortly after O’Kelley and Stinski left the store, the officers responded to a burglar alarm at a residence within walking distance of the store and discovered a broken window there. The occupant of the residence, who was not home at the time, testified USCA11 Case: 23-12947 Document: 70-1 Date Filed: 10/27/2026 Page: 3 of 36 23-12947 Opinion of the Court 3 at trial that she returned to find that someone had ap- parently tried to kick in her back door and had broken a window and bent the curtain rod inside the home. O’Kelley admitted in his first statement to police that he and Stinski went to a residence in order to commit a theft therein on the night in question but fled after the alarm went off. A few hours later, at approximately 5:30 a.m. on April 11, the same police officers were leaving the convenience store when they spotted a fire in the dis- tance. Rushing to the scene, they found the Pittman residence engulfed in flames. This home was in close proximity to the residence which had been burglar- ized earlier. In the headlights of the police car, one of the officers again observed O’Kelley and Stinski, this time standing in a wooded area across the street from the burning house. However, they had disappeared by the time the officers exited the vehicle. Once the fire was extinguished, officials discovered the remains of the victims[: Susan Pittman and her thirteen-year- old daughter, Kimberly]. That evening, O’Kelley and Stinski brought a duffle bag to the mobile home where Stinski was stay- ing, and O’Kelley told the group of people present that he and Stinski had stolen items from automo- biles in the neighborhood. He also confided in one member of the group that he had burglarized and set fire to the Pittman residence, and he claimed to have slit Ms. Pittman’s throat and to have raped Kimberly. O’Kelley then removed from his wallet a tooth in a USCA11 Case: 23-12947 Document: 70-1 Date Filed: 10/27/2026 Page: 4 of 36 4 Opinion of the Court 23-12947 ziplock bag and stated that he had “busted it out of the little girl’s mouth.” After O’Kelley and Stinski left the mobile home, the group opened the duffle bag and discovered several items, including compact discs marked with Kimberly’s initials and prescription pill bottles containing oxycodone with Ms. Pittman’s name and address on the labels. A group member phoned the police and advised them of the bag’s con- tents and O’Kelley’s comments. After the contents of the bag were identified by a family member as belong- ing to the victims, O’Kelley and Stinski were arrested, and a human tooth later determined through DNA evidence to belong to Kimberly was found inside O’Kelley’s wallet. In his second statement to police, O’Kelley confessed to killing Ms. Pittman by repeatedly beat- ing and stabbing her, to beating and stabbing Kim- berly, to setting the Pittman residence on fire while Kimberly was still alive, and to taking numerous items from the residence. O’Kelley v. State, 670 S.E.2d 388, 392 (Ga. 2008). Based on the evidence presented, a Georgia jury convicted O’Kelley of two counts of malice murder, as well as (among other crimes) multiple counts of burglary, arson, and cruelty to children. Id. at 391. The jury recommended death sentences for both mur- ders, which the trial court imposed, and the Georgia Supreme Court affirmed. See id. The United States Supreme Court denied certiorari. O’Kelley v. Hall, 558 U.S. 840 (2009) (mem.). USCA11 Case: 23-12947 Document: 70-1 Date Filed: 10/27/2026 Page: 5 of 36 23-12947 Opinion of the Court 5 O’Kelley then filed a petition for state habeas relief, which was denied. The Georgia Supreme Court subsequently denied O’Kelley’s application for a certificate of probable cause to appeal. B Having completed two trips through the state system, O’Kelley filed a petition for federal habeas corpus pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2254, raising nine general claims comprising approxi- mately 60 subclaims. As relevant here, O’Kelley raised an ineffec- tive-assistance-of-counsel claim (Claim I) alleging 26 separate fail- ures, and an omnibus claim asserting 21 discrete trial errors (Claim IV). The Warden of the Georgia Department of Corrections an- swered, contending that most of O’Kelley’s claims were procedur- ally defaulted or unexhausted. The district court ordered a bifur- cated briefing schedule following discovery, directing the parties first to address whether any of O’Kelley’s claims were procedurally barred and then, depending on the resolution of the procedural is- sue, to address the merits of his remaining claims. In his procedural briefing, the Warden once again argued that many of the claims in O’Kelley’s petition were unexhausted or defaulted, and—for the first time—also asserted that one of O’Kel- ley’s general claims and at least 39 subclaims failed to satisfy the fact-pleading requirements of Rule 2(c) of the Rules Governing § 2254 Cases (hereinafter, the “Habeas Rules”)—which, as relevant here, requires that a habeas petition both “(1) specify all the grounds for relief available to the petitioner” and “(2) state the facts USCA11 Case: 23-12947 Document: 70-1 Date Filed: 10/27/2026 Page: 6 of 36 6 Opinion of the Court 23-12947 supporting each ground.” In his seven-page reply, O’Kelley didn’t address the Warden’s Rule 2(c) argument. Following the completion of briefing, the district court “conducted a claim by claim analysis to determine which of [O’Kel- ley’s] claims he would be permitted to brief on the merits.” Order on Mot. for Recons. at 3, Dkt. No. 122. As relevant here, the court dismissed six subclaims as insufficiently pleaded under Rule 2(c): I(i), I(p), I(q), I(y), IV(a), and IV(q). The details of those subclaims aren’t particularly germane to the resolution of the lone question before us; it suffices to say that they alleged various failures of O’Kelley’s trial counsel (to prepare witnesses, file motions, etc.) and trial-court errors (in conducting voir dire, conducting penalty- phase proceedings, etc.).1 This part does matter: The Warden had challenged only three of the six subclaims that the district court dismissed, and only two of those as insufficiently pleaded. Specifically, the Warden had argued that subclaims I(i) and I(p) failed to satisfy Rule 2(c)’s fact- pleading requirements because O’Kelley “failed to connect the law with any specific facts.” As for the third subclaim, IV(a) , the War- den challenged it as partially procedurally defaulted. The Warden hadn’t challenged the other subclaims—I(q), I(y), and IV(q)—on any basis. 1 The district court, in an alternative holding, also dismissed subclaim I(i) as unexhausted and subclaims IV(a) and IV(q) as procedurally defaulted. USCA11 Case: 23-12947 Document: 70-1 Date Filed: 10/27/2026 Page: 7 of 36 23-12947 Opinion of the Court 7 O’Kelley moved the district court to reconsider its dismissal order. In particular, he contended that the court shouldn’t have dismissed any of the six claims as insufficiently pleaded because, he said, they satisfied Rule 2(c)’s fact-pleading standard. O’Kelley also argued that he lacked notice that his pleadings were deficient be- cause the Warden hadn’t challenged any of his claims or subclaims as insufficiently pleaded in his initial answer and, even three years later, had challenged only two subclaims on fact-pleading grounds. In the alternative, O’Kelley asserted that the court should, at a minimum, grant him leave to amend the insufficiently pleaded subclaims. Both the Habeas Rules and Federal Rules of Civil Pro- cedure, he said, contemplated an opportunity to correct pleading deficiencies. See 28 U.S.C. § 2242 (stating that a habeas petition “may be amended or supplemented as provided in the rules of pro- cedure applicable to civil actions”); Fed. R. Civ. P. 15(a)(2) (“The court should freely give leave [to amend] when justice so re- quires.”). Finally, and as particularly relevant here, O’Kelley argued that the Due Process Clause required the court to give him an op- portunity to amend before it sua sponte dismissed any of his sub- claims. O’Kelley attached to his reconsideration motion amend- ments that he proposed to make to his habeas petition. The district court denied reconsideration. In doing so, the court rejected O’Kelley’s argument that he hadn’t received due pro- cess in connection with the dismissals: “Even if [the Warden] did not specifically describe each deficient claim, [O’Kelley] cannot ig- nore the pleading requirements of Rule 2(c).” Order on Mot. for USCA11 Case: 23-12947 Document: 70-1 Date Filed: 10/27/2026 Page: 8 of 36 8 Opinion of the Court 23-12947 Recons. at 9. The court further emphasized that the “case ha[d] been actively litigated for several years, and, throughout those years, [O’Kelley] had knowledge of Rule 2(c)’s heightened pleading requirements.” Id. And all the while, the court continued, O’Kel- ley “had access to the evidence necessary to supplement his claims with the requisite facts.” Id. The district court also denied O’Kelley’s request for leave to amend. The court didn’t read the Habeas Rules as requiring it to permit O’Kelley to correct what it deemed to be facially insufficient subclaims. Additionally, the court emphasized that it had discre- tion to grant or deny leave to amend under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 15. The court acknowledged the principle, grounded in Foman v. Davis, 371 U.S. 178 (1962), that “[i]n the absence of any apparent or declared reason—such as undue delay, bad faith or di- latory motive on the part of the movant, repeated failure to cure deficiencies by amendments previously allowed, undue prejudice to the opposing party by virtue of allowance of the amendment, futility of amendment, etc.—the leave sought should, as the rules require, be ‘freely given.’” Id. at 16. But, the court said, O’Kelley had “unduly delayed requesting leave to supplement his claims with the requisite factual support.” Id. The parties then briefed the merits of the surviving claims and subclaims, which the district court ultimately rejected. The court also denied O’Kelley a certificate of appealability on any of his claims or subclaims. O’Kelley then moved this Court to certify several questions for appeal. USCA11 Case: 23-12947 Document: 70-1 Date Filed: 10/27/2026 Page: 9 of 36 23-12947 Opinion of the Court 9 We granted a certificate of appealability (COA) on the ques- tion “[w]hether the district court abused its discretion in dismissing several of O’Kelley’s claims as insufficiently pleaded without providing notice and an opportunity to respond.”2 In so doing, we noted that the facts and procedural history in O’Kelley’s case were similar to those underlying a recent unpublished decision that had divided the panel 2–1, Williams v. Warden, GDCP, No. 22-10249, 2024 WL 4439968 (11th Cir. Oct. 8, 2024). Both cases were handled by the same district court judge, who in both cases had sua sponte dis- missed some claims as insufficiently pleaded. 2 We subsequently granted O’Kelley’s motion to expand the COA to include the following issues: (1) Did the district court issue an alternative holding dismissing Claims IV(a) and IV(q) on the ground that Appellant failed to ex- haust them in state court? (2) Did Appellee concede in the district court that Appellant properly exhausted Claims IV(a) and IV(q), and, if so, has Appellee waived or forfeited any exhaustion defense? (3) Did Appellant properly exhaust Claims IV(a) and IV(q) in state court? Given our resolution of the issue on which the COA was originally granted, we needn’t address any of these downstream issues. USCA11 Case: 23-12947 Document: 70-1 Date Filed: 10/27/2026 Page: 10 of 36 10 Opinion of the Court 23-12947 II We review de novo a district court’s grant or denial of a ha- beas corpus petition. McNair v. Campbell, 416 F.3d 1291, 1297 (11th Cir. 2005). For good measure, we’ll reiterate here what we said at the outset: The question before us is not whether, on balance, the dis- trict court should have given O’Kelley notice of its intent to dismiss some of his subclaims as insufficiently pleaded or whether it should have given him an opportunity to cure the deficiencies. Maybe it should have—perhaps that would have been better, even fairer. Ra- ther the sole question before us is whether the United States Con- stitution required the district court to do either or both of those things. We hold, in the particular circumstances presented by this case, that it did not. A Before we dive in, two housekeeping items. First, O’Kelley asserts that the question on which we granted a certificate of ap- pealability actually encompasses more than just the due-process is- sue. The reason, he says, is that the question specified in the COA uses the phrase “abuse of discretion”—which, he contends, brings in the ordinary, subconstitutional procedural rules governing pleadings, amendments, and the like. That is incorrect, for multi- ple reasons. For one, we have long held that the issue specified in a COA should be understood in the light of “the pleadings and other parts of the record.” Murray v. United States, 145 F.3d 1249, USCA11 Case: 23-12947 Document: 70-1 Date Filed: 10/27/2026 Page: 11 of 36 23-12947 Opinion of the Court 11 1251 (11th Cir. 1998). Here, that includes, most notably, (1) O’Kel- ley’s own COA motion, which framed the issue presented as one sounding in “due process” and cited Williams as evidence that the constitutional issue was one on which reasonable jurists could dis- agree, , and (2) our order granting the COA, which cited the divide in Williams as the reason for allowing O’Kelley to appeal.3 For an- other, the governing statute authorizes the issuance of a COA “only if the applicant has made a substantial showing of the denial of a constitutional right.” 28 U.S.C. § 2253(c)(2) (emphasis added). Needless to say, mine-run pleading- and amendment-related deter- minations made pursuant to ordinary procedural rules don’t usu- ally implicate “constitutional right[s].”4 Accordingly, we limit our 3 O’Kelley’s persistent focus on the Due Process Clause and Williams is both understandable and seemingly strategic, as only a constitutional rule would even plausibly enable him to avoid the tall task of demonstrating that the dis- trict court’s dismissal caused him prejudice. See, e.g., Br. for Appellant at 6 (emphasizing the Williams majority’s statement that “the complete denial of the opportunity to be heard on a material issue is a violation of due process which is never harmless error,” 2024 WL 4439968, at *7 (quoting United States v. Smith, 30 F.4th 1334, 1338 (11th Cir. 2022)); Reply Br. at 1 (same). 4 O’Kelley might have been able to solve for the second difficulty by making the required “substantial showing” in his motion regarding one of his under- lying constitutional claims—e.g., that his counsel was so deficient that he ren- dered constitutionally ineffective assistance. Tellingly, though, he didn’t at- tempt to do so. USCA11 Case: 23-12947 Document: 70-1 Date Filed: 10/27/2026 Page: 12 of 36 12 Opinion of the Court 23-12947 consideration here to the question whether the district court’s dis- missal of O’Kelley’s six subclaims violated the Due Process Clause. Second logistical issue: Recall that of the six subclaims the district court rejected on Rule 2(c) grounds, it dismissed two at the state’s urging—I(i) and I(p)—and four others sua sponte—I(q), I(y), IV(a), and IV(q). Because the sua sponte dismissals clearly present the more serious due-process question, we focus our analysis on them. B In pertinent part, the Fifth Amendment provides that “[n]o person shall be . . . deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” U.S. Const. amend. V.5 The Supreme Court has long emphasized that “due process is flexible and calls for such pro- cedural protections as the particular situation demands.” Morrissey v. Brewer, 408 U.S. 471, 481 (1972). “The essential requirements of due process . . . are [1] notice and [2] an opportunity to respond.” Cleveland Bd. of Educ. v. Loudermill, 470 U.S. 532, 546 (1985) (citation modified). We will consider first whether O’Kelley was given constitutionally ade- quate notice that his claims were subject to sua sponte dismissal for 5 To be clear, the Fifth Amendment, not the Fourteenth, is the governing pro- vision here because it is a federal (not state) court that O’Kelley contends vio- lated his due-process rights. USCA11 Case: 23-12947 Document: 70-1 Date Filed: 10/27/2026 Page: 13 of 36 23-12947 Opinion of the Court 13 insufficient pleading, and then whether he received a constitution- ally adequate opportunity to be heard. 1 First up, notice. Due process requires “notice reasonably calculated, under all the circumstances, to apprise interested par- ties” of a rule or action that may affect their rights. Mullane v. Cent. Hanover Bank & Tr. Co., 339 U.S. 306, 314 (1950). Importantly here, it is well settled that constitutionally sufficient notice can be estab- lished by “generally available . . . statutes and case law” as well as “publicly available document[s],” like the Habeas Rules. City of W. Covina v. Perkins, 525 U.S. 234, 241–42 (1999); see also Arrington v. Helms, 438 F.3d 1336, 1351 (11th Cir. 2006). The question for us is whether the applicable rules, understood in conjunction with our case law interpreting and applying them, gave O’Kelley constitu- tionally adequate notice of both the fact-pleading requirement and the district court’s authority to sua sponte dismiss claims that fail to satisfy that requirement. They did. Start with the rules themselves. It is well settled that “[h]abeas corpus petitions must meet heightened pleading require- ments . . . .” McFarland v. Scott, 512 U.S. 849, 856 (1994). Unlike the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, which permit what has come to be called “notice pleading,” the Habeas Rules require “fact pleading.” Hittson v. GDCP Warden, 759 F.3d 1210, 1265 (11th Cir. 2014) (citation modified). In particular, as already noted, Rule 2(c) of the Habeas Rules requires that a habeas petition “(1) specify all the grounds for relief available to the petitioner” and “(2) state the USCA11 Case: 23-12947 Document: 70-1 Date Filed: 10/27/2026 Page: 14 of 36 14 Opinion of the Court 23-12947 facts supporting each ground.” Rule 2(c). Rule 2 goes on to state that an inmate’s petition “must substantially follow” a standard form. Rule 2(d), Rules Governing § 2254 Cases. The instructions for that form, which is appended to the rules, contains a bold-face paragraph labeled “CAUTION.” Rules Governing § 2254 Cases, Appendix of Forms, Instructions ¶ 9. Among the warnings there: “[Y]ou must state the facts that support each ground.” Id. For good measure, the body of the form reiterates that the petitioner must “[s]tate the facts supporting each ground” on which he seeks relief—notably underlining the word “facts.” Id. Appendix of Forms, Petition ¶ 12. Then, for better measure still, in each of sev- eral sections of the form in which the petitioner is invited to allege a ground for relief (e.g., “GROUND ONE”), an instruction once again underscores the fact-pleading requirement: “Supporting facts (Do not argue or cite law. Just state the specific facts that sup- port your claim.).” Id. Appendix of Forms, Petition ¶ 12(a).6 Given the substance of the rules, it’s no surprise that this Court has repeatedly emphasized the heightened pleading burden that habeas petitioners face. In Borden v. Allen, for instance, we ex- plained that “[t]he § 2254 Rules . . . mandate ‘fact pleading’ as op- posed to ‘notice pleading,’ as authorized under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 8(a).” 646 F.3d 785, 810 (11th Cir. 2011). And, we 6 The standard form provided to habeas petitioners by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Georgia is materially identical to the stock form appended to the Habeas Rules. See Southern District of Georgia, Application for Habeas Corpus under 28 U.S.C. Section 2254. USCA11 Case: 23-12947 Document: 70-1 Date Filed: 10/27/2026 Page: 15 of 36 23-12947 Opinion of the Court 15 continued, “[c]oupled with the form petition . . . , the federal rules give the petitioner . . . ample notice of the difference.” Id.; see also, e.g., Hittson, 759 F.3d at 1265 (explaining that a petitioner’s gener- alized allegations in a motion for leave to amend were insufficient under Rule 2(c)). We have explained that the reason for the dis- tinction—and for the heightened standard that habeas petitioners face—is “obvious”: “Unlike a plaintiff pleading a case under Rule 8(a), the habeas petitioner ordinarily possesses, or has access to, the evidence necessary to establish the facts supporting his collateral claim; he necessarily became aware of them during the course of the criminal prosecution or sometime afterwards.” Borden, 646 F.3d at 810. Accordingly, there can be little doubt that the Habeas Rules and our follow-on precedent gave O’Kelley sufficient notice that he bore an obligation to specify the facts supporting each of his claims. The ensuing question is whether O’Kelley had the requisite notice that if he didn’t properly plead particular facts, the district court could dismiss his petition sua sponte. We hold that he did. Rule 4 of the Habeas Rules provides: The clerk must promptly forward the petition to a judge under the court’s assignment procedure, and the judge must promptly examine it. If it plainly ap- pears from the petition and any attached exhibits that the petitioner is not entitled to relief in the district court, the judge must dismiss the petition and direct the clerk to notify the petitioner. If the petition is not dismissed, the judge must order the respondent to file an answer, motion, USCA11 Case: 23-12947 Document: 70-1 Date Filed: 10/27/2026 Page: 16 of 36 16 Opinion of the Court 23-12947 or other response within a fixed time, or to take other action the judge may order. Rule 4, Rules Governing § 2254 Cases (emphasis added). On its face, Rule 4’s second sentence plainly empowers the district court to dismiss a habeas petition sua sponte in some circum- stances. O’Kelley seeks to confine that authority in two ways. Re- spectfully, neither persuades us. First, O’Kelley asserts that a dis- trict court’s sua sponte dismissal authority extends only to a petition that is legally meritless or frivolous on its face—not, by extension, to one that fails Rule 2(c)’s fact-pleading requirement. See Oral Arg. at 4:40-5:07. His argument, we think, is foreclosed twice over. One, we have effectively collapsed the law-fact distinction that O’Kelley seemingly wants to draw. In Paez v. Secretary, Florida De- partment of Corrections, we observed that “[i]f a petition does not set forth a sufficient factual basis for habeas relief, the petition is ‘le- gally insufficient on its face,’ and the district court must dismiss it.” 947 F.3d 649, 653 (11th Cir. 2020) (emphasis added) (quoting McFar- land, 512 U.S. at 856). Two, in Borden, having expounded on the fact-pleading requirement prescribed by Rule 2 and its accompany- ing standard forms, we went on to emphasize that “Rule 4 of the § 2254 Rules puts the petitioner on notice of what is likely to hap- pen if his petition fails to comply with the fact pleading require- ments of Rule 2(c) and (d).” 646 F.3d at 810. Quoting Rule 4’s critical second sentence, we said, in no uncertain terms: “The judge acts sua sponte.” Id. USCA11 Case: 23-12947 Document: 70-1 Date Filed: 10/27/2026 Page: 17 of 36 23-12947 Opinion of the Court 17 Second, and separately, O’Kelley contends that a district court’s Rule 4 sua sponte dismissal authority is time-limited. A dis- trict court may dismiss a petition on its own motion for facial in- sufficiency, he says, only during its “prompt” preliminary review of a case and at the screening stage, and not thereafter. See Br. of Appellant at 4. But the Supreme Court rejected a similar argument in Day v. McDonough, 547 U.S. 198 (2006). There, the Court consid- ered the question “whether a federal court lacks authority, on its own initiative, to dismiss a habeas petition as untimely, once the State has answered the petition without contesting its timeliness.” Id. at 202. The habeas petitioner sought to impose on Rule 4 the same sort of temporal limitation that O’Kelley posits here—“the court loses authority” to dismiss a petition sua sponte, the petitioner there asserted, “[o]nce an answer has been ordered and filed.” Id. at 207. The Supreme Court rejected that narrow reading of Rule 4 and affirmed the sua sponte dismissal of a habeas petition entered after the state had filed its answer. See id. at 209. Our own post-Day precedent, if anything, makes even more clear that nothing in the Due Process Clause artificially time-con- strains a district court’s Rule 4 dismissal authority. In McNabb v. Commissioner Alabama Department of Corrections, we upheld a Rule 4 dismissal entered “approximately four years” after a habeas peti- tion had been filed. 727 F.3d 1334, 1340 (11th Cir. 2013). In that case, the district court had issued a scheduling order stating—or at the very least strongly implying—that it wouldn’t rule on the mer- its without giving the petitioner an opportunity to brief the case. USCA11 Case: 23-12947 Document: 70-1 Date Filed: 10/27/2026 Page: 18 of 36 18 Opinion of the Court 23-12947 Id. at 1339. Then, having “permitted the case to languish for ap- proximately four years,” it did it exactly that—summarily rejecting the petitioner’s claims on the merits. Id. at 1340. There, the district court deprived the petitioner of what was, in effect, a legitimate expectation—if not quite a vested right, per se—and, indeed, we lamented that, in all fairness, the petitioner “should have been able to rely upon the court’s scheduling order.” Id. at 1339. Even so, we assiduously maintained the distinction that O’Kelley’s position blurs—namely, between what may be “good” in some abstract sense and what is constitutionally required. “We may not fully condone [the district court’s] procedure,” we said, “but neither can we say it amounted to a due process violation.” Id. at 1340; accord id. at 1339 (noting that although the petitioner had reasonably re- lied on the district court’s representations, “the failure of the dis- trict court to give notice to the parties that it would decide the mer- its of the claims without briefing does not rise to the level of a due process violation”); id. at 1340 (“Although adversarial briefing is vi- tal to the court’s decision-making process, a petitioner has no right to briefing in his habeas proceeding. Accordingly, we conclude that the district court did not violate [the petitioner’s] due process rights in this circumstance.”). * * * We hold that between the plain text of Habeas Rules 2 and 4, the standard forms that accompany them, and the relevant case law, O’Kelley had constitutionally adequate notice both (1) that he had an obligation to plead specific facts supporting each of his USCA11 Case: 23-12947 Document: 70-1 Date Filed: 10/27/2026 Page: 19 of 36 23-12947 Opinion of the Court 19 claims for relief and (2) that if he failed to do so the district court could dismiss his petition sua sponte. B Notice, of course, is only half the due-process equation; the Fifth Amendment also requires “an opportunity to respond,” Loudermill, 470 U.S. at 546—or, to use the more common formula- tion, “an opportunity to be heard,” Richards v. Jefferson County, 517 U.S. 793, 797 n.4 (1996). We hold that O’Kelley had the requisite opportunity. O’Kelley’s first such opportunity was in his habeas petition itself. For reasons already explained in detail, the Habeas Rules, the accompanying forms, and our explanatory case law gave O’Kel- ley ample notice of both (1) the need to plead specific facts and (2) the consequences of failing to do so. Against that backdrop, O’Kel- ley had every occasion—and incentive—to submit a compliant ha- beas petition. His petition, which he filed with the assistance of counsel, spanned some 40 pages and alleged nine claims compris- ing some 60 subclaims. O’Kelley’s second opportunity—this time, to correct the court-identified deficiencies that had led to his petition’s dismis- sal—was in his motion for reconsideration. Cf. Turner v. Secretary, Dep’t of Corrs., 991 F.3d 1208, 1212 (11th Cir. 2021) (holding that a habeas petitioner had a sufficient opportunity to contest a district court’s sua sponte dismissal on statute-of-limitations grounds where the court explained that he could “move to reopen the action if ‘he USCA11 Case: 23-12947 Document: 70-1 Date Filed: 10/27/2026 Page: 20 of 36 20 Opinion of the Court 23-12947 believe[d] that he c[ould] show [] that the determination of untime- liness [wa]s incorrect’”). In his motion to reconsider, O’Kelley ad- dressed head on the district court’s order, arguing that he “did, in fact, meet the fact-pleading requirements under Rule 2(c)” and that he rightfully presumed that the court considered his pleading ade- quate because the “case proceeded for years without any notice from [the state] or the [c]ourt that they deemed claims in the peti- tion to be insufficiently pled.” Mot. for Recons. of Procedural De- fault Order at 8, Dkt. No. 113. The district court properly treated O’Kelley’s motion as a request to reconsider its interlocutory order under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 54(b). See Order on Mot. for Recons. at 5 (“[T]he Court’s prior order dismissing many, but not all, of Petitioner’s claims was an interlocutory order and, therefore, may be revised pursuant to Rule 54(b).”); see also Fed. R. Civ. P. 54(b) (stating that “any order . . . that adjudicates fewer than all the claims . . . may be revised at any time before the entry of judgment adjudicating all the claims”). And that characterization matters, as a court deciding a Rule 54(b) motion has “plenary authority ‘to reconsider, revise, alter or amend’ a non-final order before the entry of final judg- ment” and isn’t bound by the “significantly higher showing for re- consideration” that governs “Rule 59(e) or 60(b)” motions. Hor- nady v. Outokumpu Stainless USA, LLC, 118 F.4th 1367, 1379–81 (11th Cir. 2024) (quoting Toole v. Baxter Healthcare Corp., 235 F.3d 1307, 1315 (11th Cir. 2000)). Although the district court here once recited the standard applicable under Rules 59(e) and 60(b), the bal- ance of its order makes clear that it in fact exercised its “plenary USCA11 Case: 23-12947 Document: 70-1 Date Filed: 10/27/2026 Page: 21 of 36 23-12947 Opinion of the Court 21 authority” to evaluate all of O’Kelley’s reconsideration arguments afresh. See Order on Mot. for Recons. at 5 & n.2 (noting that Rule 54(b) “gives district courts discretion to reconsider interlocutory orders” and rejecting the state’s argument that O’Kelley’s motion was gove