Court Opinion

ID: 9496942
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 16:39:20.648053+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:57:54.045242
License: Public Domain

WILLIAMS, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part:
I concur in Parts I, II, III, IV, and V of the court’s opinion. I write separately to dissent from the court’s judgment on the McKoy issue. To obtain habeas relief based on trial error, a habeas petitioner must establish that “the error ‘had substantial and injurious effect or influence in determining the jury’s verdict.’ ” * Brecht v. Abrahamson, 507 U.S. 619, 637, 113 S.Ct. 1710, 123 L.Ed.2d 353 (1993) (quoting Kotteakos v. United States, 328 U.S. 750, 776, 66 S.Ct. 1239, 90 L.Ed. 1557 (1946)). I respectfully disagree with the majority’s conclusion that the error in this case warrants habeas relief. Given the jury’s finding of two specific aggravating factors related to Mien’s brutal and terrible murder of Trooper Worley, the mitigating circumstances that the faulty jury instruction prevented the jury from considering, and the three mitigating circumstances that the jury unanimously found to exist but unanimously found insufficient to outweigh the aggravating factors, I believe that one can say “with fair assurance, after pondering all that happened without stripping the erroneous action from the whole, that the judgment was not substantially swayed by the error,” Kotteakos, 328 U.S. at 765, 66 S.Ct. 1239, and thus that the error did not have a “substantial and injurious effect or influence in determining the jury’s verdict,” Brecht, 507 U.S. at 637, 113 S.Ct. 1710. Accordingly, I respectfully dissent from the court’s judgment on the McKoy issue.

 I note that Judge Gregory properly recognizes that the same Brecht /Kotteakos harmless error standard applies to both capital and non-capital proceedings. See ante at 348-349; see also Rouse v. Lee, 339 F.3d 238, 254 (4th Cir.2003) (en banc) ("[A]ny distinctions between the procedures required in capital and noncapital cases are primarily relevant to trial .... ” (internal quotation marks omitted)), cert. denied - U.S. -, 124 S.Ct. 1605, 158 L.Ed.2d 248 (2004); cf. Satterwhite v. Texas, 486 U.S. 249, 256-58, 108 S.Ct. 1792, 100 L.Ed.2d 284 (1988) (holding that the same Chapman harmless error standard applies on direct review of both capital and noncapital cases).