Heath v. Secretary, FL Dept. of Corrections, No. 12-14715 (11th Cir. 2013)
Annotate this CasePetitioner, a Florida death row inmate awaiting execution, petitioned the district court for a writ of habeas corpus. The district court denied the petition and issued a certificate of appealability (COA). In Grim v. Sec'y. Fla. Dep't of Corr., the court faced the same issues the district court posed in the COA it issued in this case. The court concluded that the Florida Supreme Court's decision rejecting defendant's claim that the Sixth Amendment did not require that his indictment "specify... which aggravating circumstances [the State] would rely on in seeking the death penalty," was not contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established Supreme Court precedent. The Grim panel held that the Supreme Court's decision in McDonald v. City of Chicago resolved the second issue: whether the Fifth Amendment's indictment clause required that the aggravating circumstances be found by the grand jury and charged in the indictment. In McDonald, the court concluded that the grand jury indictment requirement was not applicable to the States. Accordingly, in light of Grim and McDonald, the court affirmed the district court's denial of the petition.
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