BURGER
v.
ZANT, WARDEN
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The Supreme Court granted certiorari in a capital case to review whether the defendant received effective assistance of counsel at his second death sentence hearing, after identifying that the lower courts had apparently confused arguments from the defendant's first sentencing proceeding with those from the second one. The Court vacated the judgment and remanded the case to the Court of Appeals for reconsideration of the ineffectiveness claim under the standard established in Strickland v. Washington.
[1] A court reviewing a claim of ineffective assistance of counsel must assess counsel's actions based on the specific proceeding being challenged, not on arguments made in a…
[2] A petitioner is entitled to a review of an ineffective assistance of counsel claim that is unaffected by judicial error in assessing counsel's strategic decisions.
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C. A. 11th Cir. Motion of petitioner for leave to proceed in forma pauperis granted. Certiorari granted limited to Question 1(B) presented by the petition. The opinion of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Georgia on this question, which the Court of Appeals adopted without separate discussion, may be flawed in at least one respect. In judging the reasonableness of counsel’s decision not to present character evidence, the District Court apparently mistook the arguments counsel made at petitioner’s first, ultimately vacated, sentencing for the arguments counsel made at petitioner’s second sentencing, the proceeding whose result is challenged in this petition. Blake v. Zant, 513 F. Supp. 772, 796-798 (1981).
Petitioner is entitled to an assessment of his ineffectiveness claim unaffected by this, as well as by any other, error.
Accordingly, the judgment is vacated and the case is remanded to the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit with instructions to reconsider the effectiveness of counsel’s assistance at petitioner’s second sentencing and for further consideration in light of Strickland v. Washington, 466 U. S. 668 (1984).
Justice Marshall would grant certiorari for the reasons stated in the dissenting opinion of Judge Johnson and set the case for oral argument.
Justice Brennan:
Adhering to my view that the death penalty is in all circumstances cruel and unusual punishment prohibited by the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments, Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U. S. 158, 227 (1976), I would grant certiorari and vacate the death sentence in this case.