Opinion ID: 145740
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Appeal from the Denial of State Habeas Relief

Text: While Smith's appeal from the state trial court's denial of his second habeas petition was pending, this Court decided Penry II. Smith filed a brief in the Court of Criminal Appeals explaining the relevance of Penry II to his habeas claim. He noted that the special-issue questions in his case were for all relevant purposes the same as those in Penry II. Applicant's Brief for Submission in View of the United States Supreme Court's Opinion in Penry v. Johnson in No. W91-22803-R (Tex.Crim.App.), pp. 4-5. He maintained the nullification charges were also indistinguishable, id., at 5-6, and had in Penry II been held insufficient to cure the error created by the Special Issues. Applicant's Brief for Submission, at 6-7. Smith concluded by explaining that the procedural bar for raising an issue already resolved on direct review did not apply where an intervening legal decision renders a previously rejected claim meritorious. Id., at 12 (citing Ex parte Drake, 883 S.W.2d 213, 215 (Tex.Crim.App.1994) (en banc)). (We note the Court of Criminal Appeals recently adopted this position. See Ex parte Hood, 211 S.W.3d 767, 775-778 (Tex.Crim.App.2007).) The Court of Criminal Appeals ordered supplemental briefing on the relevance of Penry II. Given that Penry II addressed the sufficiency of a nullification charge as a cure for inadequate special issues, Smith's supplemental brief concentrated on the same issue. Nevertheless, his central argument remained that he presented significant mitigating evidence that was virtually indistinguishable from Penry's and thus undeniably beyond the scope of the special issues. Applicant's Supplemental Briefing on Submission in No. 74,228 (Tex. Crim.App.), p. 12 (hereinafter Applicant's Supp. Briefing). The nullification charge was inadequate as well, in his view, because, based on the ethical dilemma, there is a reasonable probability that the nullification instruction ... precluded [a juror who found that Smith's personal culpability did not warrant a death sentence] from expressing that conclusion. Id., at 13. Alternatively, Smith argued he was also entitled to relief under Penry II  because [e]ven if the jury might have been able to give effect to some of [his] mitigating evidence within the scope of [the] special issues, the confusing nullification instruction itself may have prevented the jury from doing so. Id., at 14. As such, the nullification charge was worse than no instruction at all. Id., at 15-16 (emphasis deleted). The State responded that the special issues were adequate and, furthermore, that the nullification charge, unlike the charge in Penry II, cured any problem. State's Brief in No. 74,228 (Tex.Crim. App.), pp. 2-11. In response to Smith's second argument the State contended it tests the bounds of reason to grant [Smith] relief based on a good-faith attempt to give him a supplemental instruction to which he was not constitutionally entitled. Id., at 11. In reply Smith reiterated his two distinct arguments, devoting most of the brief to his original trial objection. Applicant's Reply to Respondent's Response to Applicant's Brief for Submission in No. 74,228 (Tex.Crim.App.). The Court of Criminal Appeals denied the habeas petition. It found no Penry error, reasoning that the special issues were adequate to consider the mitigating evidence. Ex parte Smith, 132 S.W.3d, at 412-415. Any evidence excluded from the purview of the jury, the court indicated, was not constitutionally significant. Id., at 413, n. 21. In the alternative the court held the nullification charge and the argument at trial were distinguishable from those at issue in Penry II. In Smith's case, the court reasoned, the nullification charge would have been an adequate cure even if the special issues were too narrow. 132 S.W.3d, at 416-417. The majority did not adopt or address the reasoning of the two concurring opinions, which argued that Smith had procedurally defaulted his  Penry II claim because while he had objected to the special issues at trial, he had not objected separately to the nullification charge. Id., at 423-424 (Hervey, J., concurring); id., at 428 (Holcomb, J., concurring).