Opinion ID: 798459
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Thacker's direct appeal

Text: On January 2, 2003, one of Thacker's trial attorneys, OIDS attorney Gretchen Mosley, filed a notice of intent to appeal on his behalf. On June 13, 2003, Mosley filed a petition in error announcing Thacker's intent to perfect a direct appeal of his sentences. On March 25, 2004, Mosley filed an appellate brief on Thacker's behalf asserting two propositions of error. Proposition One asserted that Thacker's death sentence should be vacated or modified on grounds that the trial court never acquired jurisdiction over the aggravating circumstances alleged by the prosecution because those aggravating circumstances were not charged in an information or indictment, subjected to adversarial testing in a preliminary hearing, nor determined to probably exist by a neutral and detached magistrate. Proposition Two asserted that the interpretation of the heinous, atrocious, or cruel aggravating circumstance adopted by the Oklahoma state courts violated the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments by failing to properly channel the factfinder's discretion in imposing the death penalty. Thacker waived his right to oral argument before the OCCA. On October 21, 2004, the OCCA issued an opinion affirming the judgments and sentences. Thacker I, 100 P.3d at 1060. Thacker filed a petition for writ of certiorari with the United States Supreme Court on January 18, 2005. That petition was denied on March 7, 2005. Thacker v. Oklahoma, 544 U.S. 911, 125 S.Ct. 1611, 161 L.Ed.2d 288 (2005).