Blanco v. Secretary, Florida Department of Corrections, No. 11-11993 (11th Cir. 2012)
Annotate this CaseIn 1982, a jury convicted Defendant Omar Blanco of the first-degree capital murder of John Ryan and armed burglary of the residence where Ryan lived. The court accepted the jury's sentencing recommendation on the murder conviction and sentenced Defendant to death. The court also sentenced him to seventy-five years' imprisonment for the armed burglary conviction. The Florida Supreme Court affirmed Blanco's convictions and death sentence and denied collateral relief. In 1987, Defendant petitioned for a writ of habeas corpus to set aside his convictions and sentences. The District Court denied the writ as to his convictions but granted the writ as to his death sentence on the ground that he had been denied his Sixth and Fourteenth Amendment right to effective assistance of counsel in the penalty phase of his case. The Eleventh Circuit affirmed. The result of the new penalty-phase proceeding was the same: the jury recommended the death penalty and the court imposed it. In this appeal, the issue before the Eleventh Circuit was whether a writ of habeas corpus should have been granted to vacate Defendant's death sentence. The District Court for the Southern District of Florida decided that it should not. The Eleventh Circuit agreed and therefore affirmed its judgment.
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