Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/529bv.pdf
Page Number: 467.0

529US2

Unit: $U46

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392

WILLIAMS v. TAYLOR

Opinion of the Court

likelihood of a different outcome as legitimate “prejudice.”
Even if a defendant’s false testimony might have persuaded
the jury to acquit him, it is not fundamentally unfair to con-
clude that he was not prejudiced by counsel’s interference
with his intended perjury. Nix v. Whiteside, 475 U. S. 157,
175–176 (1986).

Similarly, in Lockhart, we concluded that, given the over-
riding interest in fundamental fairness, the likelihood of a
different outcome attributable to an incorrect interpretation
of the law should be regarded as a potential “windfall” to the
defendant rather than the legitimate “prejudice” contem-
plated by our opinion in Strickland. The death sentence
that Arkansas had imposed on Bobby Ray Fretwell was
based on an aggravating circumstance (murder committed
for pecuniary gain) that duplicated an element of the under-
lying felony (murder in the course of a robbery). Shortly
before the trial, the United States Court of Appeals for the
Eighth Circuit had held that such “double counting” was im-
permissible, see Collins v. Lockhart, 754 F. 2d 258, 265
(1985), but Fretwell’s lawyer (presumably because he was
unaware of the Collins decision) failed to object to the use
of the pecuniary gain aggravator. Before Fretwell’s claim
for federal habeas corpus relief reached this Court, the Col-
lins case was overruled.16 Accordingly, even though the Ar-
kansas trial judge probably would have sustained a timely
objection to the double counting, it had become clear that
the State had a right to rely on the disputed aggravat-
ing circumstance. Because the ineffectiveness of Fretwell’s
counsel had not deprived him of any substantive or proce-
dural right to which the law entitled him, we held that his

16 In Lowenﬁeld v. Phelps, 484 U. S. 231 (1988), we held that an aggra-
vating circumstance may duplicate an element of the capital offense if the
class of death-eligible defendants is sufﬁciently narrowed by the deﬁnition
of the offense itself.
In Perry v. Lockhart, 871 F. 2d 1384 (1989), the
Eighth Circuit correctly decided that our decision in Lowenﬁeld required
it to overrule Collins.