Hodges v. Bell, No. 09-5021 (6th Cir. 2013)
Annotate this CaseIn 1992, Hodges pled guilty to first-degree murder in Tennessee and a jury sentenced him to death. The trial court refused to allow his attorneys to ask prospective jurors whether they could consider a life sentence for a defendant with a prior conviction for murder. The evidence indicated that Hodges planned the killing of a stranger to obtain money to move to Florida. Hodges presented mitigation evidence, claiming he had been raped at age 12, had drug abuse issues, and was raised in an unstable household. State courts upheld the conviction and sentence on appeal and denied Hodges’s petition for post-conviction relief. Hodges petitioned for federal habeas relief, which the district court denied. The Sixth Circuit affirmed, holding that state courts reasonably applied federal law in determining that restrictions imposed on voir dire did not interfere with Hodges’s constitutional right to a fair and impartial trial and in determining that Hodges’s trial counsel were not ineffective for advising Hodges to plead guilty to murder and aggravated robbery. The district court properly denied Hodges’s requests for discovery, an evidentiary hearing, and habeas relief on a claim of juror misconduct and ineffective assistance of counsel.
The court issued a subsequent related opinion or order on August 14, 2013.
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