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: Capital Defense Weekly

email edition

By Karl R. Keys, Esq.

The email edition is now available. Note, we played around with this week’s formatting, please let us know if there is a problem.  I’m off holiday and in court all day Monday. I’ll be iphone posting (i.e. no links), the results of the long conference as they are known. Leading off this edition is the Eleventh Circuit’s opinion in Herbert Williams, Jr, v. Allen. The Eleventh Circuit in Williams grants penalty phase relief as “trial counsel?s investigation of mitigating evidence in Williams? background fell short of prevailing professional norms.” As a result, counsel “obtained an incomplete and misleading understanding of Williams? life history” as did the jury. When weighing prejudice the panel notes that case was not “highly aggravated” in light of 9-3 vote for life and the mitigation, both that presented at trial and missed by counsel, taken as a whole, “might have altered the trial judge?s appraisal of Williams? moral culpability...continue to full post

Full post as published by Capital Defense Weekly on September 28, 2008 (boomark / email).