Magwood v. Warden, et al., No. 07-12208 (11th Cir. 2011)
Annotate this CasePetitioner's, an Alabama death-row inmate, 28 U.S.C. 2254 petition was partially granted by the district court on his claim that his sentence violated the fair-warning requirement of the Due Process Clause because it was based on Ex parte Kyzer, which was decided after he committed his offense and was retroactively applied to his case. The Alabama Supreme Court's interpretation of its death penalty statute in Kyzer - that the charge averred in the indictment could be used as the aggravating circumstance for a judge to impose the death penalty - provided the required, and only, aggravating circumstance for petitioner to receive the death penalty when he was resentenced in 1986. Based on a clear reading of Alabama law, the court held that petitioner was not eligible for the death penalty. Therefore, petitioner was entitled to habeas relief because his death sentence violated the fair-warning requirement of the Due Process Clause as it was based on Kyzer, which was an "unforeseeable and retroactive judicial expansion of narrow and precise statutory language."
This opinion or order relates to an opinion or order originally issued on January 23, 2009.
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