Blackmon v. Booker, No. 11-1038 (6th Cir. 2012)
Annotate this CaseA 1998 neighborhood shooting in Detroit resulted in the death of an 18-year-old male bystander and injury to two other bystanders, a 21-year-old male and a nine-year-old female. A year later, a Michigan state court convicted 22-year-old Blackmon of second-degree murder, using a firearm during the commission of a felony, and two assaults with intent to do great bodily harm. The court sentenced him to 40 to 60 years on the murder count, concurrent three-to-10 year terms on the assault counts, and a consecutive two-year term on the firearm count. Eleven years later, a federal district court on collateral review (28 U.S.C. 2254) held that Michigan had deprived Blackmon of a fair trial in violation of the Due Process Clause and granted a conditional writ of habeas corpus and told Michigan to retry him. The Sixth Circuit reversed. The prosecution’s elicitation of, and comment upon, testimony regarding Blackmon’s gang affiliation did not render his trial so unfair as to result in a denial of federal due process; it did not result in a decision that “involved an unreasonable application of clearly established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States.”
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