United States Sixth Circuit

District court's denial of defendant's petition for a writ of habeas corpus from his capital murder conviction is reversed and a conditional writ of habeas corpus granted where: 1) defendant's appellate counsel was ineffective for failing to raise on direct appeal the issue of his right to allocution before sentencing, and the opposite conclusion reached by the Ohio Supreme Court constitutes an unreasonable application of federal law; and 2) defendant's remaining claims are rejected as meritless, and noteably, the jury instructions and verdict forms that defendant's trial court utilized are conceptually indistinguishable from those at issue in Spisak III, and as such, the jury instructions properly focused only on the overall balancing question, and the instructions repeatedly told the jury to consider all of the relevant evidence.

Appellate Information

• Argued 04/28/2009
• Decided 04/06/2010
• Published 04/06/2010

Judges

• Before: MERRITT, MOORE, and GILMAN, Circuit Judges.

Court

• United States Sixth Circuit

Counsel

• For Appellees:
  
• ARGUED:David J. Graeff, Westerville, Ohio, for Appellant. Laurence R. Snyder, Office of the Ohio Attorney General, Cleveland, Ohio, for Appellee. ON BRIEF:David J. Graeff, Westerville, Ohio, W. Joseph Edwards, Law Office of W. Joseph Edwards, Columbus, Ohio, for Appellant. Laurence R. Snyder, Office of the Ohio Attorney General, Cleveland, Ohio, for Appellee.