Burns v. Secretary, FL Dept. of Corrections, et al., No. 11-14148 (11th Cir. 2013)
Annotate this CasePetitioner appealed the district court's denial of his petition for a writ of habeas corpus based on the trial court's refusal to instruct the jury to draw no inference from petitioner's failure to testify. The court concluded that the Florida Supreme Court's harmless error conclusion was neither contrary to nor an unreasonable application of clearly established federal law. Reviewing the record as a whole and applying the harmless error analysis in Brecht v. Abrahamson, the court concluded that the claimed error did not have a substantial and injurious effect on the jury's capital sentence recommendation. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment.
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