Burns v. Mays, No. 11-5214 (6th Cir. 2022)
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In 1992, Burns, with five accomplices, approached a car in which four men were drinking and smoking. Looking for a fight, Burns and his accomplices robbed the car's occupants, then began shooting them, killing two. Blackman escaped with a minor gunshot wound. Thomas, despite having been shot several times, survived; his testimony was instrumental in the trials. Burns was convicted on two counts of felony murder, receiving a death sentence for one murder and a life sentence for the other.
Seeking habeas relief, Burns claimed that he received ineffective assistance of counsel at the sentencing stage and that the Tennessee prosecutor wrongfully relied on inconsistent testimony and knowingly presented false testimony at the guilt stage. The Sixth Circuit affirmed the denial of relief. The Supreme Court has never established that a capital defendant has a constitutional right to introduce, at sentencing, residual-doubt evidence, offered to undermine the prosecution’s case, which led to the conviction. Burns’s counsel did not err by failing to pursue the introduction of residual-doubt evidence at sentencing. Burns’s sentencing counsel did a fair amount of investigation in preparation for the mitigation phase and adopted a strategy of focusing on Burns’s religious background and other signs of good character, which was not unreasonable. Burns fails to establish that the testimony was actually inconsistent or false.
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