Harris v. Sharp, No. 17-6109 (10th Cir. 2019)
Annotate this CaseJimmy Dean Harris was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death. He appealed, and the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals (OCCA) reversed his sentence and remanded for a retrial at the penalty phase. After the retrial, the state district court reimposed the death penalty. Harris appealed and sought post-conviction relief in state court. When these efforts failed, he brought a habeas petition in federal district court. The federal court denied relief, and Harris appealed again, arguing in part, that his trial counsel was ineffective in failing to seek a pretrial hearing on the existence of an intellectual disability, which would have prevented the death penalty. The federal court rejected this claim. In the Tenth Circuit’s view, the district court should have conducted an evidentiary hearing to decide this claim, so it reversed and remanded for further consideration to this issue. Given the need to remand on this issue, the Court also remanded for the district court to reconsider the claim of cumulative error. But the Tenth Circuit affirmed the denial of habeas relief on Harris’s other claims.
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