Opinion ID: 2719703
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Duty-to-Retreat Instruction

Text: Petitioner claims that counsel was ineffective for failing to request a jury instruction regarding the no-retreat doctrine. Petitioner points out that separate from the Castle Doctrine, (codified at Ohio Rev. Code Ann § 2901.05), Ohio Rev. Code Ann. § 2901.09(B) provided him with the separate statutory protection that “a person who lawfully is in that person’s residence has no duty to retreat before using force in self-defense, defense of another, or defense of that person’s residence . . . .” Petitioner acknowledges that the trial court provided an instruction on the Castle Doctrine, but argues it was deficient, so counsel should have requested an instruction on this separate statutory defense, especially since it is more favorable than the Castle Doctrine, which required the individual upon whom force is used to be in the process of entering the defendant’s home, whereas the no-retreat doctrine requires merely that the defendant is in his own home when he feels force is necessary to defend himself. The state court of appeals saw “little difference” between this argument and Petitioner’s argument regarding the allegedly faulty jury instructions and rejected it for the same reasons. The court “agree[d] . . . that the trial court’s stray comment that [Petitioner] had a ‘duty to retreat’ may or may not have been misleading to the jury. However, we are not persuaded that but for the absence of an augmented instruction, the outcome of the trial would have been otherwise.” Comer, 2012 WL 1831167, at . 12 Again, for the reasons discussed throughout this opinion, we find that the Ohio Court of Appeals’ conclusion that alleged error did not amount to prejudice under Strickland was not an unreasonable application of that federal law.