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I. Under its original meaning, the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause of the Eighth Amendment was interpreted as including disproportionate and arbitrary sentences. Under this Court’s precedents, a death sentence should not be selectively, irregularly, or arbitrarily imposed. In this case the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit has selectively, irregularly, and arbitrarily affirmed the denial of a writ of habeas corpus. Question presented: did the en banc Sixth Circuit violate the Eighth Amendment’s Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause by selectively, irregularly, and arbitrarily affirming Hodge’s capital sentence?

II. Did the en banc Sixth Circuit violate the Eighth Amendment and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution because its holding resulted in a disproportionate sentence in comparison to the cases of similarly situated capitally-sentenced prisoners?

III. Did the en banc Sixth Circuit violate this Court’s precedents when it affirmed the denial of federal habeas relief based upon a decision 1n which the Kentucky Supreme Court refused to consider mitigation evidence for any purpose — beyond explaining the crimes — even though the unpresented mitigation may well have been enough to outweigh evidence of a particularly brutal crime?

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1. Whether this Court should adopt and encourage, when requested by a party, a definition of reasonable doubt to include “a doubt that would cause a reasonable person to hesitate to act in a matter of importance” and not defining reasonable doubt would violate the Fifth Amendment requirement of a finding of guilt be made beyond a reasonable doubt and the Sixth Amendment’s requirement of a unanimous verdict?

2. Whether the District Court erred in applying U.S.S.G. $3C1.1 when failing to make specific findings on the elements of perjury and where the circumstances show Mr. Biel’s testimony was due to faulty memory which he realized when confronted on cross-examination at trial and apologized, the defense did not reference Mr. Biel’s testimony thereafter, and defense counsel stated the decision to call Mr. Biel as a witness was purely counsel’s strategic decision?

3. Whether the District Court erred in not applying U.S.S.G. §5K2.10 when its explicit reason for doing so was the jury rejected Defendant’s claim of self- defense at trial, failed to address any of the 6 factors/criteria under U.S.S.G. §5K2.10, and failed to identify any relevant case-specific reasons for not applying U.S.S.G. §5K2.10?

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Introduction.

In Taylor v. Louisiana, 419 U.S. 522, 539 (1975), the Court instructed, “jury wheels, pools of names, panels, or venires from which juries are drawn must not systematically exclude distinctive groups in the community and thereby fail to be reasonably representative thereof.” Following Taylor, Duren v. Missouri, 439 U.S. o07, 363-64 (1979), announced a three-part test for establishing a prima facie violation of a right embodied in the Sixth Amendment: the right to a jury drawn from a fair cross-section of the community. The “defendant must show (1) that the eroup alleged to be excluded is a ‘distinctive’ group in the community; (2) that the representation of this group in venires from which juries are selected is not fair and reasonable in relation to the number of such persons in the community; and (3) that this underrepresentation is due to systematic exclusion of the group in the jury-selection process.” The Court in Berghuis v. Smith, 559 U.S. 314 (2010) declined to endorse a specific appropriate measure of disparity when determining whether a defendant was deprived of a fair cross-section of the community. significantly, Berghuis, recognized that the “ultimate[] dispositive” question to be resolved under Duren on a Sixth Amendment challenge to a jury selection process is: “To the extent under representation existed, was it due to ‘systematic exclusion?” Jd. at 330.

The question presented here is:

1. Is the Sixth Amendment right to a jury that represents a fair cross-section of the community violated where a defendant identifies a specific systematic i