Opinion ID: 42478
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Failure to object to officer’s testimony

Text: Cannady next contends that he was deprived of effective legal assistance because his trial counsel failed to object to 9 “hearsay” testimony by two police officers in the penalty phase. In determining Strickland prejudice in the penalty phase, “the question is whether there is a reasonable probability that, absent the errors, the sentencer . . . would have concluded that the balance of aggravating and mitigating circumstances did not warrant death.” Strickland, 465 U.S. at 695. The district court noted that, by the time of sentencing, the jury knew that Cannady previously had been convicted of two murders, and was serving life sentences for those murders when he stomped and bludgeoned his cellmate to death. Consequently, the court determined that even if counsel had successfully objected to the officer’s testimony, there was little probability that the jury would not have concluded that Cannady posed a future danger or that the mitigating evidence outweighed the evidence of future dangerousness. The district court’s resolution of this claim is not debatable.