Opinion ID: 42478
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Failure to object to jury charge

Text: Cannady urges that a COA is warranted because his trial counsel failed to object to two errors in the punishment charge. The trial court instructed the jury that if it sentenced Cannady to life imprisonment, he would have to serve at least thirty-five years before becoming eligible for parole. However, the law at the time of trial rendered him ineligible for parole until he served forty years. The district court determined that, although 10 Cannady’s counsel should have objected to the erroneous charge, no prejudice was caused by the error: There is simply no reasonable probability that the jury would have found a triple murderer, who they were sentencing for a murder he committed while already serving two life sentences for two prior murders, any less dangerous if they knew that he would have to serve 40, rather than 35, years before becoming eligible for parole. The very fact that he murdered Bonal while serving two life sentences demonstrated that Cannady posed a danger if sentenced to life imprisonment. Cannady v. Dretke, No. C-01-273, slip op. at 25 (S.D. Tex. Apr. 29, 2005). Cannady also asserts that counsel should have objected to the punishment charge because it did not specify that the findings on both special issues were to be beyond a reasonable doubt. In the district court, Cannady argued that Ring v. Arizona, 536 U.S. 584, 122 S. Ct. 2428 (2002), and Apprendi v. New Jersey, 530 U.S. 466, 120 S. Ct. 2348 (2000), required the State to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that there was nothing sufficiently mitigating about Cannady to justify a life sentence. The district court noted that neither Ring nor Apprendi had been decided at the time of Cannady’s trial in 1997. The court then held that Cannady’s counsel “did not render deficient performance by failing to anticipate the Supreme Court’s decisions in cases decided approximately three and five years after Cannady’s trial.” Cannady, No. C-01-273, slip op. at 26. Even if Cannady’s 11 substantive claims have merit,1 the district court’s holding is not debatable. Neither Ring nor Apprendi existed at the time Cannady’s conviction became final, neither case applies retroactively,2 and his counsel could not have been ineffective for failing to object to issues based on Supreme Court cases that were yet to be decided. Therefore, we need not grant a COA on this claim.