FOUND Petitioner GUILTY for FELONY and sentenced to State Prison on 4.5 years.

STATE of CALIFORNIA - . on June 12, 2019, FOUND Petitioner NOT GOULTY and case was Fully DISMISSED.

| QUESTION IS, HOW THE JUDGMENT PROVE ITS CONVICTION UNDER THE FEDERAL RULES OF EVIDENCE 28 U.S.C. §§ 2072-2074 (Rules Enabling Act) and | FEDERAL RULE of EVIDENCE (FRE) 803(22),

AS THEY EXISTED in March 2013?

I. Whether Arizona, having refused Strickland cumulative error determination of prejudice, is entitled to AEDPA deference for a decision made using the wrong standard?

Il. Whether Mr. Martinez has made a substantial showing of the denial of a constitutional right to support a certificate of appealability where the trial court granted sentencing relief as to Count 1 (Murder) but denied relief as to Count 2 (Kidnapping) even though its determination as to Count | (Murder) was based on a determination of ineffective assistance of trial counsel as to many of the same ageravating factors that resulted in the aggravated sentence as to Count 2 (Kidnapping)?

2

In 1988, the Georgia legislature enacted a statutory framework designed to enforce the Eighth Amendment’s substantive prohibition on the execution of mentally incompetent prisoners, as announced by this Court in Ford v. Wainwright, 477 U.S. 399 (1986). See O.C.G.A. § § 17-10-60 — 17-10-71 (hereinafter, the “Execution Competency Act” or “ECA”). See also Perkins v. Hall, 288 Ga. 810, 825 n.8 (2011).

However, the ECA does not contain adequate protections to guard against the unacceptable risk that prisoners like Jerry Scott. Heidler, who possess substantial claims that they are incompetent to be executed, will nonetheless face execution. This is because Georgia’s statutory framework imposes an impossible 10- to 20-day deadline on the development of execution incompetency claims—the shortest period in the entire country.

In the courts below, Mr. Heidler challenged the ECA as violative of his constitutional rights. This case gives rise to the following question:

1. Does Georgia’s statutory framework for enforcing the constitutional prohibition on the execution of incompetent prisoners, 1n imposing a 10- to 20-day deadline on the development of incompetency claims, create an unacceptable risk that incompetent prisoners will be wrongfully executed in violation of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments?

ia

This postconviction capital case involves the imposition of a death sentence on a non-shooter, Tarus Sales, who was not present at the murder scene when another person, Herschel Ostine, killed the victim by shooting him. Ostine, tried several years after Sales, received a life sentence, while Sales received a death sentence for the murder committed by Ostine. Ostine did not testify at Sales’ trial, and no witness testified at Sales’ trial directly about any communications between Sales and Ostine concerning carrying out the murder. The evidence was undisputed by the parties at Sales’ trial that Sales was not present at the murder scene and that Ostine murdered the victim. Sales was given a death sentence under the Texas law of parties for the murder committed by Ostine, after Sales’ indictment had charged that Sales himself killed the victim.

The questions presented are:

1. Whether a death sentence may be constitutionally imposed on a non-shooter such as Sales who was not physically present at the murder scene, under the Eighth Amendment and this Court’s precedents in Tison v. Arizona, 481 U.S. 137, 107 S.Ct. 1676, 95 L.Ed.2d 127 (1987) and Enmund v. Florida, 458 U.S. 782, 102 8.Ct. 3368, 73 L.Ed.2d 1140 (1982), where the jury found in a general verdict under the Texas law of parties that Mr. Sales had entered into a conspiracy to commit the offense of retaliation against the victim with Mr. Ostine, and Sales should have anticipated that Ostine would murder the victim, and the state courts did not make Enmund-Tison findings that Sales

1

In Miller v. Alabama, 567 U.S. 460 (2012), this Court held that the Eighth Amendment forbids mandatory LWOP sentences for juvenile defendants convicted of first-degree murder. Later, this Court held in Jones v. Mississippi, 593 U.S. 98 (2021), that trial judges are not required to make a finding of irreparable corruption before imposing LWOP in Miller cases. However, this Court made clear that its holding in Jones did not involve as-applied disproportionality arguments.

After Miller and Jones, courts are fractured on how to resolve as-applied disproportionality arguments in Miller sentencing appeals. Some jurisdictions grant virtually unbridled discretion over the imposition of LWOP sentences. See State v. Ramirez, 990 N.W.2d 550 (Neb. 2023). Other jurisdictions enforce the proportionality principle at the heart of Miller and reverse LWOP sentences imposed in cases where the defendant is not irreparably corrupt. See People v. Bennett, 966 N.W.2d 768 (Mich. 2021). Some jurisdictions have developed still other approaches.

This case presents an ideal vehicle for resolving the question of how as-applied disproportionality claims in Miller sentencing cases should be resolved on appeal because Mr. Walker was sentenced to LWOP despite presenting voluminous evidence that he is not irreparably corrupt. This case thus presents the following question:

Whether as-applied disproportionality arguments in Miller sentencing cases should be resolved on appeal based on the standard of irreparable corruption as described in the key paragraph in Montgomery v. Louisiana, 577 U.S. 190 (2016), or left entirely in the discretion of trial judges?