Opinion ID: 1695166
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: claim 3. the trial court erred in admitting lockett's confessions which were obtained in violation of his constitutional (sixth amendment) right to counsel.

Text: Lockett's third and final claim assails the admissibility of his confessions to Rankin County authorities which were made over the course of several days with each statement occurring after a valid, written waiver. Lockett contends he was not informed that counsel had been appointed for him, a fact which Lockett contends vitiates the purported waiver of his rights secured by the police prior to his interrogations. Stated somewhat differently, Lockett asserts that because he was not informed that a lawyer had been appointed to represent him, any waivers of his Miranda rights were invalid waivers of his Sixth Amendment rights, and his confessions should have been suppressed. This claim, like each of its predecessors, is time barred by § 99-39-5(2) and successive writ barred by § 99-39-27(9). On direct appeal, Lockett challeng[ed] the confession introduced against him as violative of the Agee rule [ Agee v. State, 185 So.2d 671, 673 (Miss. 1966)] because all of the officers present when the confession was made did not testify at trial. Lockett v. State, 517 So.2d at 1328. This Court rejected that claim because [t]he trial court's determination to admit Lockett's confession [was] supported by substantial evidence and we will not disturb it. 517 So.2d at 1329. None of the fifteen (15) grounds contained in Lockett's first application for post-conviction relief filed by his second set of lawyers assailed the voluntariness of Lockett's confession. 614 So.2d at 892. It is too late now to reconstitute this issue in a second and successive application for post-conviction relief. Lockett, however, attempts to invoke a fundamental constitutional error exception and the intervening decision exception to the time and successive writ bars. He likewise contends that trial counsel's failure to advance this theory as a basis for objection constitutes ineffective assistance of trial counsel. Lockett has failed to demonstrate fundamental constitutional error or point to any intervening decisions that would except him from the bar created by the passage of time or by successive writ. The effective assistance of counsel claim was procedurally barred by waiver in Lockett's first application for post-conviction relief  Lockett v. State, 614 So.2d at 894  where we stated the following: Lockett had different counsel at trial and on appeal: William O. Townsend of Pearl, Mississippi, and David Clark of Florence, Mississippi at trial  both guilt and penalty phase  Clive A. Stafford Smith of Atlanta, Georgia, on appeal. Lockett had a meaningful opportunity to raise the issue of ineffective trial counsel on direct appeal but did not do so. Furthermore, Lockett has not shown cause nor actual prejudice, nor can he, for not raising this issue on direct appeal. See Wiley v. State, 517 So.2d 1373 (Miss. 1987); Evans v. State, 485 So.2d 276 (Miss. 1986). Therefore, this claim is procedurally barred by waiver pursuant to Miss. Code Ann. § 99-39-21(1) (Supp. 1991). It is needless to say  but we will say it, nevertheless  that Lockett cannot, in a second and successive application for post-conviction relief, revitalize, reconstitute, or rehash an argument or issue that was procedurally barred on direct appeal or in his first application for post-conviction relief. This claim, like all the others, is barred pursuant to the time bar contained in Miss. Code Ann. § 99-39-5(2) and certainly by the second or successive writ bar found in Miss. Code Ann. § 99-39-27(9).