Opinion ID: 73389
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: issues

Text: Mills raises the following issues in this appeal: (1) whether the trial judge’s override of the jury’s recommendation of a life sentence, and the Florida Supreme Court’s affirmance, resulted in an arbitrary and discriminatory sentence of death; (2) whether the Florida Supreme Court violated Parker v. Dugger in failing to review adequately the record for mitigating factors; (3) whether the Florida Supreme Court conducted an inadequate harmless error analysis; (4) whether Mills received ineffective assistance of counsel at the guilt phase, jury penalty phase and judge sentencing phase; (5) whether the felony murder aggravating factor is unconstitutional; (6) whether Mills’s lawyers had an actual conflict of interest that adversely affected their representation; (7) whether the trial court violated his confrontation rights; (8) whether the introduction of nonstatutory aggravating factors rendered his trial fundamentally unfair; (9) whether the trial court failed to consider mitigating evidence in violation of Eddings 8 v. Oklahoma, 455 U.S. 104, 114-115 (1982); (10) whether the introduction of unreliable scientific evidence rendered Mills’s trial unfair; (11) whether the prosecutors engaged in misconduct during the penalty phase of Mills’s trial. Because we find that Mills is not entitled to relief on the merits of some of his claims and has procedurally defaulted the others, we affirm the district court’s denial of his petition for writ of habeas corpus. Specifically, we hold in accord with the district court that Mills has procedurally defaulted on the following claims: whether the introduction of nonstatutory aggravating factors rendered his trial fundamentally unfair; whether the prosecutors engaged in misconduct during the penalty phase of Mills’s trial; and whether Mills’s lawyer rendered ineffective assistance of counsel at the guilt phase. We address Mills’s remaining issues in turn.6