Opinion ID: 766141
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Failure to Instruct Jury on Effect of Mitigating Evidence

Text: 107 Hughes's third contention here is more akin to a standard Penry claim. He asserts that the jury was never told what to do if it determined that the evidence mandated affirmative answers to the three special issues, but also concluded that mitigating evidence compelled a life-sparing decision. Citing Penry, 492 U.S. at 326, Hughes suggests that the charge failed to provide the jury a vehicle for expressing the view that [Hughes] did not deserve to be sentenced to death based upon his mitigating evidence of mental and emotional problems from 1973 onward. 108 The trial court instructed the jury to answer No to any of the special issues if at least 10 or more jurors determined that, based upon the evidence . . . the Defendant's character or record or any of the circumstances of the offense mitigate against the imposition of the death penalty in this case. 109 If Hughes was suffering from a mental or emotional problem when he shot Trooper Frederick, the jury could have given effect to that mitigating evidence in the first special issue addressing whether the shooting was deliberate. See Lucas, 132 F.3d at 1082 (noting that the jury could have considered mitigating aspect of defendant's psychosis and schizophrenia under first special issue). Hughes did not suggest that he was still suffering from such a problem at the time of the shooting. Rather, he urged that he had been rehabilitated during his twelve years in prison. We thus reject his claim.