Conner v. GDCP Warden, No. 13-13928 (11th Cir. 2015)
Annotate this CaseDeath row inmate-petitioner John Conner appealed the denial of his petition for habeas relief. Conner was convicted and sentenced to death for the 1982 beating death of J.T. White. Conner confessed that he struck White with a bottle and then beat him with a stick. Conner had attempted suicide while awaiting trial, and was admitted to the hospital for treatment. Conner was given a full psychological evaluation; the hospital issued a letter to the trial judge stating that Conner was competent to stand trial and could be criminally responsible for his actions. In Conner’s first appeal, he was granted a certificate of appealability (COA) on three claims: “(1) whether he procedurally defaulted his [intellectual disability] claim; (2) whether he was denied effective assistance of counsel at the sentencing phase of his trial; and (3) whether he was prejudiced by prosecutorial misconduct during closing arguments.” Because the Eleventh Circuit held that Conner did not procedurally default his intellectual-disability claim and that the District Court erred by denying discovery and an evidentiary hearing on his intellectual-disability claim, the case was remanded the case for the District Court to determine in the first instance whether discovery and an evidentiary hearing were appropriate. On remand, the District Court granted Conner’s request for discovery and an evidentiary hearing on his intellectual-disability claim. After hearing testimony from seven experts who had evaluated Conner for intellectual disability, the District Court denied Conner’s intellectual-disability claim on the merits. Separately, the District Court once again denied Conner’s penalty-phase ineffective-assistance-of-counsel and prosecutorial-misconduct claims, but granted a COA as to “whether [the District] Court erred in concluding that [Conner’s] trial counsel had not rendered ineffective assistance during the mitigation phase of the trial.” The Eleventh Circuit granted Conner’s request to expand the COA to include two more claims: “[w]hether the District Court erred in denying Mr. Conner’s claim that he has [intellectual disability] and is not eligible for the death penalty”; and “[w]hether the District Court erred in determining that the state court’s decision (that the prosecutor’s closing arguments were not so egregious as to require reversal) was not contrary to, or an unreasonable application of, Supreme Court precedent.” After careful review of the record, and with the benefit of briefing and oral argument, the Eleventh Circuit affirmed.
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