Carter v. Mitchell, No. 06-4238 (6th Cir. 2012)
Annotate this CaseIn 1992 an Ohio jury convicted Carter of murdering a store clerk while robbing a convenience store and recommended that the court impose a sentence of death. Although Carter admitted that he entered the store with the intent to rob it, he testified that he never intended to be the one to hold the gun, although he knew the gun had bullets and that a co-defendant had showed him how to shoot it. He further admitted that before the murder they had participated in “a lot” of robberies of drug dealers that same evening. On direct review, the Ohio Supreme Court affirmed and the U.S. Supreme Court denied certiorari. The district court denied habeas corpus. The Sixth Circuit affirmed rejection of an argument that the state courts improperly used the “nature and circumstances” of the offense as aggravating, rather than mitigating, factors, but reversed and remanded with respect to ineffective assistance of counsel claims. Those claims, which concerned counsel eliciting unfavorable mitigation evidence and failing to call Carter’s mother to testify about his upbringing, were not procedurally defaulted.
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