Court Opinion

ID: 9499095
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 17:37:32.583015+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:59:16.769144
License: Public Domain

RONALD LEE GILMAN, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
In setting aside the death sentence imposed upon Jason Gesty for the murder of Ann Serafino, the majority today reaches beyond the arguments advanced by Getsy and announces a new rule of constitutional law. The majority holds that the Eighth Amendment and the common-law rule of consistency require us to invalidate Getsy’s death sentence because a different jury failed to find the murder-for-hire specification at the later trial of the man who enlisted Getsy as the hired killer. In other words, because John Santine did not receive the death penalty, neither can Get-sy-
Binding precedent from both the Supreme Court and this court indicates that neither the Constitution nor the federal common law contains any such rule. See McCleskey v. Kemp, 481 U.S. 279, 306-07, 107 S.Ct. 1756, 95 L.Ed.2d 262 (1987) (rejecting the argument that the defendant could “prove a constitutional violation by demonstrating that other defendants who may be similarly situated did not receive the death penalty”) (emphasis in original); United States v. Crayton, 357 F.3d 560, 565 (6th Cir.2004) (holding that the common-law “rule of consistency [is] no longer good law”). Instead of following these binding precedents, the majority “breaks *599new ground” in this case, contrary to the Supreme Court’s decision in Teague v. Lane, 489 U.S. 288, 301, 109 S.Ct. 1060, 103 L.Ed.2d 334 (1989), which generally bars federal courts from applying new rules of constitutional law in habeas corpus proceedings.
The majority also circumvents the other principal limitation on a federal court’s power to grant relief from a state-court judgment — namely, 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1), as modified by the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AED-PA). I cannot join the majority in sidestepping these important limitations on federal judicial power in order to (1) endorse and apply a type of proportionality review never required by the Supreme Court, and (2) to resurrect and expand the discredited common-law rule of consistency, which the habeas petitioner himself understandably chose not to invoke. See Keeton v. Flying J, Inc., 429 F.3d 259, 274 (6th Cir.2005) (Gilman, J., dissenting) (“Judicial restraint ... cautions against adopting a position whose merits have not been advocated even by the party seeking relief.”).
In addition to vacating Getsy’s sentence, the majority calls into question the validity of his underlying murder conviction by granting him an evidentiary hearing to explore charges of bias against the state-court trial judge. This issue was thoroughly examined by the state courts of Ohio, and I see no constitutional defect in their rejection of Getsy’s claim of judicial bias. Furthermore, by granting relief on both Getsy’s challenge to his sentence and his attack on his underlying conviction, the majority has placed the state in an inextricable quandary — one in which it has only 180 days to somehow cure what the majority believes to an unconstitutional sentence, even though Getsy’s entire conviction could eventually be invalidated on the ground of judicial bias.
Because I am convinced that the district court properly applied governing constitutional and statutory standards in its comprehensive 132-page opinion denying Get-sy’s habeas petition, I would affirm the decision below in its entirety. I therefore respectfully dissent.
I. THE MAJORITY’S NEW RULE OF CONSTITUTIONAL LAW
Relying on both the proportionality requirement of the Eighth Amendment and the common-law rule of consistency, the majority holds that Getsy’s death sentence must be reversed “because the other necessary participant, the hiring party, was acquitted of the same murder for hire specification.” Maj. Op. at 14. The majority reaches this conclusion not by citing to cases from the Supreme Court or this court that compel such a holding, but instead by attempting to distinguish one-by-one the binding precedents that I believe refute the arguments eventually adopted by the majority. Our role under AEDPA, however, is not to show the absence of prior authority precluding recognition of the right at issue, but instead to determine whether that right has already been clearly established. See 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1) (setting forth the applicable standard of review).
In my view, the answer to that inquiry in the present case is rather straightforward. The majority has not cited a single case in which the Supreme Court has declared an otherwise lawful death sentence imposed upon a defendant unconstitutional on the ground that another participant in the murder did not receive the death penalty. When combined with the fact that this court has never applied the now-repudiated common-law rule of consistency to defendants tried separately, the absence of *600Supreme Court caselaw supporting Getsy’s proportionality argument is fatal to his claims for relief. In support of my conclusion, I have set forth below why I believe that the majority’s holding runs counter to, or at the very least would require a considerable expansion of, federal law as interpreted by both the Supreme Court and this court.
A. Teague’s principle of nonretroactivity
As a general principle, federal habeas corpus petitioners “may not avail themselves of new rules of criminal procedure” per the Supreme Court’s decision in Teague v. Lane. See Beard v. Banks, 542 U.S. 406, 408, 124 S.Ct. 2504, 159 L.Ed.2d 494 (2004). The Court has explained that deciding “whether a constitutional rule of criminal procedure applies to a case on collateral review involves a three-step process.” Id. at 411, 124 S.Ct. 2504. This process begins with a court’s determination of
when the defendant’s conviction became final. Second, it must ascertain the legal landscape as it then existed, and ask whether the Constitution, as interpreted by the precedent then existing, compels the rule. That is, the court must decide whether the rule is actually “new.” Finally, if the rule is new, the court must consider whether it falls within either of the two exceptions to nonretroactivity.
Id. (citations and quotation marks omitted). This three-step analysis reveals that the rule announced by the majority is “new” and therefore unavailable to Getsy in this habeas corpus proceeding.
There is no question that Getsy’s conviction became final when the Supreme Court denied his petition for certiorari in June of 1999. See Getsy v. Ohio, 527 U.S. 1042, 119 S.Ct. 2407, 144 L.Ed.2d 805 (1999). I will thus turn to the second step in the Teague analysis — the determination of “whether the Constitution, as interpreted by the precedent [existing in 1999], compels the rule” adopted by the majority. See Beard, 542 U.S. at 411, 124 S.Ct. 2504.
In my view, there are three reasons why the rule announced by the majority is a “new rule” under Teague. First, the majority revives the rule of consistency, whose reach has been severely limited (if not completely abolished) by the Supreme Court and whose application to defendants tried separately has been explicitly rejected by this court. The second reason is that the majority’s inconsistent-verdict rule incorrectly construes the Supreme Court’s proportionality precedents. These precedents examine whether capital punishment is proportionate to the criminal offense at issue, not whether one criminal’s sentence is proportionate to those received by other offenders. Finally, the rule vastly expands the reach of the Court’s fractured decision in Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238, 92 S.Ct. 2726, 33 L.Ed.2d 346 (1972). I will address each of these reasons in turn.
1. The rule of consistency
As stated above, the majority bases its decision to vacate Getsy’s sentence in part on the common-law rule of consistency, which it says “prohibited a jury’s acquittal of all but one of multiple defendants charged with jointly committing a crime that requires at least two participants.” Maj. Op. at 587. A helpful starting point in analyzing the majority’s rationale is the Supreme Court’s most recent treatment of the rule of consistency in United States v. Powell, 469 U.S. 57, 105 S.Ct. 471, 83 L.Ed.2d 461 (1984). In Powell, the Court reaffirmed the validity of its previous decision in Dunn v. United States, 284 U.S. 390, 52 S.Ct. 189, 76 L.Ed. 356 (1932), in which it had “held that a criminal defen*601dant convicted by a jury on one count could not attack the conviction because it was inconsistent with the jury’s verdict of acquittal on another count.” Powell, 469 U.S. at 58, 105 S.Ct. 471. The defendant in Powell was convicted of using a telephone in conspiring to distribute and possess cocaine, but was acquitted of conspiring to knowingly and intentionally possess cocaine with the intent to distribute it. Id. at 60, 105 S.Ct. 471. Rejecting Powell’s argument that the verdicts were impermis-sibly inconsistent, the Court unanimously endorsed the proposition that the rationale underlying a jury’s verdict is unreviewable. Id. at 64-65, 105 S.Ct. 471. In so doing, the Court explained that inconsistent verdicts “often are the product of jury lenity” — a result that the government cannot appeal because of double jeopardy principles — and that appellate review of the sufficiency of the evidence provided a sufficient “safeguard[] against jury irrationality.” Id. at 67, 105 S.Ct. 471.
The majority acknowledges that all but one of the courts of appeals to face this issue have read Powell as precluding application of the rule of consistency. Maj. Op. at 588 n.4, 590. Among those courts is the Sixth Circuit, which has addressed the continuing viability of the rule of consistency on three separate occasions. See United States v. Newton, 389 F.3d 631, 636 (6th Cir.2004), vacated in part on other grounds, — U.S. -, 126 S.Ct. 280, 163 L.Ed.2d 35 (2005); United States v. Crayton, 357 F.3d 560, 565-67 (6th Cir.2004); United States v. Sachs, 801 F.2d 839, 845 (6th Cir.1986).
This court first addressed the status of the rule of consistency in Sachs, a case in which Sachs and a codefendant were charged with a conspiracy to infringe the copyrights of two popular films. Id. at 841. Sachs argued that, because the charges against his alleged coconspirator were dismissed before trial, his guilty verdict on the conspiracy count must be reversed. Without discussing Powell, this court held that the rule of consistency did not apply where “coconspirators are tried separately,” adopting the Eleventh Circuit’s view that the fact that “the evidence was insufficient to support a guilty verdict in the one case does not mean that conviction on different evidence in another case was improper.” Id. at 845 (quoting United States v. Roark, 753 F.2d 991, 996 (11th Cir.1985)). The court concluded that the same was true in cases where charges against a coconspirator were dismissed before trial, meaning that Sach’s conviction could stand. Sachs, 801 F.2d at 845.
In the two more recent cases, this court has squarely held that the rule of consistency did not survive the Supreme Court’s decision in Powell. See Newton, 389 F.3d at 636; Crayton, 357 F.3d at 565-67. The Crayton court addressed the question at length, analyzing the Powell decision and the response of our sister circuits to that decision. Id. at 565-66 (citing cases from the First, Fourth, Fifth, Ninth, and Eleventh Circuits that read Powell as “rendering] the rule of consistency no longer good law”); see also United States v. Morton, 412 F.3d 901, 904 (8th Cir.2005) (confirming, after this court’s ruling in Cray-ton, that the Eighth Circuit reads Powell as barring reversal of “a conviction of one defendant [because it] is inconsistent with a verdict of acquittal of another defendant on the same count”). Rejecting the contrary view of the Tenth Circuit, this court held that “the rule of consistency previously recognized in this circuit did not survive Powell.” Crayton, 357 F.3d at 566-67 (refusing to follow United States v. Suntar Roofing, Inc., 897 F.2d 469, 475 (10th Cir.1990)) (quotation marks omitted). The defendant’s conviction for conspiracy to possess cocaine was therefore upheld, even though the jury had acquitted his only *602coconspirator of the same offense. 357 F.3d at 562.
Crayton’s principal holding was reaffirmed just last year in Newton, 389 F.3d at 636. Like his counterpart in Crayton, the defendant in Newton was convicted of conspiring to possess illegal drugs with the intent to distribute them. Id. at 633. His only alleged coconspirator, a man named Tim Wilson, was acquitted on the conspiracy charges in a separate trial. Id. at 634. Newton argued on appeal that his conviction was void under the rule of consistency because Wilson’s acquittal left Newton as the sole remaining conspirator, and a person cannot conspire with himself. Citing Crayton, this court stated that “the rule of consistency has no continuing validity.” Id. at 636. Without the rule, “Newton [could] be convicted of conspiring with Wilson despite Wilson’s acquittal.” Id.; see also id. at 639 (Moore, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part) (expressing agreement “with the majority’s resolution of Newton’s claim[ ] as to the sufficiency of the evidence,” which included the analysis of the rule of consistency). The clear import of these cases is that, in this circuit and in others, defendants cannot seek to overturn conflicting jury verdicts on the basis of the rule of consistency. This is most definitely the law of the circuit and not, as the majority struggles to show, simply “dicta” that can be disregarded. Maj. Op. at 591.
Furthermore, this court has never applied the old rule of consistency to invalidate conflicting verdicts returned by juries in separate trials. See Newton, 389 F.3d at 636 (noting that the rule of consistency “was not applied if co-conspirators were separately tried”) (citing Sachs, 801 F.2d at 845); see also Michelle Migdal Gee, Prosecution or Conviction of One Conspirator as Affected by Disposition of Case Against Coconspirators, 19 A.L.R. 4th 142, § 3[b] (2005) (collecting cases). The very law review article on which the majority relies makes this point explicitly and convincingly:
When the inconsistent verdicts come from different juries in successive trials, see, e.g., Standefer v. United States, 447 U.S. 10, 11-13, 100 S.Ct. 1999, 64 L.Ed.2d 689 (1980), there is no true inconsistency.... A truly inconsistent verdict, as I am defining it ..., is one that not only dashes with the logic of another verdict, but that also does so in a way that reveals jury error. When two juries reach verdicts that conflict with each other, the result may be uncomfortable. Indeed, it may be difficult to square with our traditional concern for the appearance of justice. But the inconsistency does not confirm that either jury reached its verdict improperly. That is a crucial distinction. Without any reason to think that either jury was acting erroneously, we have no reason to view either verdict with suspicion.
Eric L. Muller, The Hobgoblin of Little Minds? Our Foolish Law of Inconsistent Verdicts, 111 Harv. L.Rev. 771, 780 n.43 (1998). Therefore, even if the majority were correct in limiting the reach of the Powell decision, and even if we were not bound by this court’s decisions in Clayton and Newton, the rule of consistency would still not apply in the present case, where the conflicting verdicts were rendered in separate trials.
Finally, I see nothing in the Supreme Court’s earlier decisions in Morrison v. California, 291 U.S. 82, 54 S.Ct. 281, 78 L.Ed. 664 (1934), or Hartzel v. United States, 322 U.S. 680, 64 S.Ct. 1233, 88 L.Ed. 1534 (1944), that alters the interpretation of Powell that this court has recently adopted. Both Morison and Hartzel stand for the unexceptionable proposition that, where a court declares that the evi*603dence is insufficient to support one defendant’s conspiracy conviction, the conviction of the only other party to the conspiracy must also be voided. See Morrison, 291 U.S. at 93, 54 S.Ct. 281; Hartzel, 322 U.S. at 682 n. 3, 64 S.Ct. 1233; see also United States v. Bucuvalas, 909 F.2d 593, 596 (1st Cir.1990) (citing Morrison as support for the principle “that where the evidence against all of an individual’s alleged co-conspirators is deemed legally insufficient, the evidence against that individual is by definition also insufficient”).
A court’s finding that the evidence was legally insufficient to support a conviction, however, is not the same as a jury’s refusal to convict. This proposition is fully consistent with Poivell, where the Supreme Court explained that appellate review of the sufficiency of the evidence is the primary bulwark against irrational jury verdicts. See Powell, 469 U.S. at 67, 105 S.Ct. 471. Read together, then, Morrison, Hartzel, and Powell reaffirm that the evaluation of the sufficiency of the evidence proffered at trial is the exclusive means of safeguarding against verdicts that, while apparently irreconcilable, may be nothing more than the product of jury leniency or nullification and are not appealable by the government. See id. at 66-67, 105 S.Ct. 471; Bucuvalas, 909 F.2d at 597 (opining that “the Court’s emphasis in Powell on the sufficiency of the evidence fully embraces the Hartzel ruling”).

2. Comparative proportionality

Although the rule of consistency is not a principle rooted in the Eighth Amendment, the majority elsewhere in its opinion reveals that its true concern is that Getsy’s death sentence is “disproportionate” to the sentence imposed upon the “mastermind” of the conspiracy to murder the Serafi-nos — namely, Santine. Maj. Op. at 584. But the Supreme Court’s proportionality jurisprudence, contrary to the majority’s view, focuses on whether the punishment of death is appropriate for specific types of criminal conduct, not on whether one defendant’s death sentence is morally justifiable with respect to that of another participant in the same crime.
Proportionality, as the Supreme Court has explained, refers “to an abstract evaluation of the appropriateness of a sentence for a particular crime.” Pulley v. Harris, 465 U.S. 37, 42-43, 104 S.Ct. 871, 79 L.Ed.2d 29 (1984). Evaluating the nature of the offense and the penalty, as well as sentencing practices in various jurisdictions, the “Court has occasionally struck down punishments as inherently disproportionate, and therefore cruel and unusual, when imposed for a particular crime or category of crime.” Id. at 43, 104 S.Ct. 871. Examples of “inherently disproportionate punishments” that are set forth in Pulley include a death sentence for the rape of an adult woman that does not result in death, and a death sentence for a defendant who aids and abets the commission of a felony but does not take life, attempt to take life, or intend to take life. Id. (citing Enmund v. Florida, 458 U.S. 782, 102 S.Ct. 3368, 73 L.Ed.2d 1140 (1982), and Coker v. Georgia, 433 U.S. 584, 97 S.Ct. 2861, 53 L.Ed.2d 982 (1977) (plurality opinion)). These are the very examples seized on by Getsy, who argues in his brief that his sentence “is disproportionately severe in comparison to the sentences imposed on all of the other participants as well as others similarly situated.”
But the Court in Pulley expressly rejected the argument that Getsy is making (and that the majority appears to accept) — namely, that the Constitution requires “comparative proportionality review.” See 465 U.S. at 51, 104 S.Ct. 871. This type of review, the Court observed, “purports to inquire ... whether the pen*604alty is ... unacceptable in a particular case because [it is] disproportionate to the punishment imposed on others convicted of the same crime.” Id. at 43, 104 S.Ct. 871. Even though a comparative proportionality review is not constitutionally required, the Ohio Supreme Court conducts such reviews. This court has repeatedly upheld the Ohio Supreme Court’s review procedures as falling “within the wide latitude allowed” states in defining the type of cases used for comparison. See Wickline v. Mitchell, 319 F.3d 813, 824 (6th Cir.2003) (rejecting the habeas petitioner’s “claim that the Ohio Supreme Court failed to grant him meaningful proportionality review of his death sentence”); Buell v. Mitchell, 274 F.3d 337, 368-69 (6th Cir.2001) (rejecting the habeas petitioner’s “contentions regarding inadequate appellate review of the proportionality of death sentences under the Ohio statute ... because no proportionality review is constitutionally required”). Getsy’s proportionality argument is thus foreclosed by both our own precedents and those of the Supreme Court.
Nothing in the Supreme Court’s decision in Enmund v. Florida, 458 U.S. 782, 102 S.Ct. 3368, 73 L.Ed.2d 1140 (1982), is to the contrary. The defendant in Enmund was the getaway driver for two others who had robbed and murdered an elderly couple. Id. at 784, 102 S.Ct. 3368. He was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder and one count of robbery, and was sentenced to death. The Supreme Court granted certiorari to decide “the question whether death is a valid penalty ... for one who neither took life, attempted to take life, nor intended to take life.” Id. at 787, 102 S.Ct. 3368. In answering that question, the Court reaffirmed that it was not deciding “the disproportionality of death as a penalty for murder, but rather the validity of capital punishment for En-mund’s own conduct.” Id. at 798, 102 S.Ct. 3368. Continuing its analysis, the Court reiterated that “[t]he focus must be on his culpability, not on that of those who committed the robbery and shot the victims, for we insist on individualized consideration as a constitutional requirement in imposing the death sentence^]” Id. (citation and quotation marks omitted) (emphasis in original).
The Supreme Court then held that, because “Enmund did not kill or intend to kill,” his culpability was insufficient to support a sentence of death under the Eighth Amendment. Id. In other words, death is a disproportionate penalty for defendants who do not take life, attempt to take life, or intend to take life. See id. at 787, 801. At no point in its opinion did the Court say that the Eighth Amendment requires state and federal courts to compare the conduct of one defendant to that of a codefendant involved in the same crime. Indeed, the Court’s lone reference to the conduct of Enmund’s codefendants was in the context of differentiating between criminals who do take life (or intend to take life) and those, like Enmund, who do not. See Tison v. Arizona, 481 U.S. 137, 149, 107 S.Ct. 1676, 95 L.Ed.2d 127 (1987) (reading En-mund as resting on the fact that Enmund’s “own participation in the felony murder was so attenuated” and that “there was no proof that Enmund had any culpable mental state,” and so limiting the Enmund holding). Enmund, in sum, held nothing more and nothing less than that states may not impose the death penalty on defendants who do not kill, attempt to kill, or intend to kill a human being — the precise question on which the Court granted review.
The majority’s reading of Enmund turns that case on its head. First, the narrow holding of Enmund cuts decisively against Getsy, since he took Ann Serafino’s life and thus falls squarely within the class *605of offenders for whom death is a permissible punishment. More importantly, the Supreme Court stated in Enmund what it would go on to reaffirm in Pulley — that what the Constitution requires is “individualized consideration” of a defendant’s culpability, “which means that [courts] must focus on relevant facets of the character and record of the individual offender.” Id. at 798, 102 S.Ct. 3368 (citations and quotation marks omitted). The focus in En-mund was “on his culpability, not on that of those who committed the robbery and shot the victims[.]” Id. (emphasis in original). Similarly, the focus in the present case must be on Getsy, not on Santine or any of the others who participated in the conspiracy to murder the Serafinos. Rather than supporting the majority’s creation of a comparative-proportionality requirement, therefore, the decision in Enmund reinforces the proposition at the heart of Pulley — that the Eighth Amendment assures that the punishment will fit the crime, but does not bar one defendant in a murder conspiracy from receiving a death sentence simply because another of the coconspirators received a life sentence.
Just as mystifying to me is the majority’s reliance on the writings of Aristotle, a law review article that also cites Aristotle, and three state-court decisions discussing proportionality as a matter of state constitutional law. Maj. Op. at 585-86. These authorities, needless to say, stray far from the only source of law that permits us to invalidate a state-court ruling and grant habeas relief — the decisions of the United States Supreme Court. See 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1).
Moreover, the state-court cases cited by the majority, even if they were valid sources of law for a federal habeas court to consider, provide little support for the majority’s holding. In one of those cases, People v. Kliner, 185 Ill.2d 81, 235 Ill.Dec. 667, 705 N.E.2d 850, 897-98 (Ill.1998), the state court affirmed the death sentence of a hired killer, even though the person who had hired him had pled guilty and received a 60-year term of imprisonment. The Florida Supreme Court in Larzelere v. State, 676 So.2d 394, 406 (Fla.1996), likewise affirmed the death sentence in the converse situation — one where a mother who hired her son to kill her husband was convicted of capital murder, but the son was acquitted of the murder charge in a subsequent trial. Finally, the one case of the three in which a state court actually overturned a sentence as disproportionate under state law predated the Supreme Court’s decision in Enmund and explicitly reaffirmed the validity of its prior decisions upholding death sentences imposed on one “but not necessarily all of the participants in a criminal transaction.” Hall v. State, 241 Ga. 252, 244 S.E.2d 833, 839 (Ga.1978). These decisions demonstrate that even those state courts that conduct a comparative proportionality review of the type endorsed by the majority have upheld death sentences despite apparently inconsistent verdicts rendered in separate trials.
Furthermore, I read the Supreme Court’s decision in McCleskey v. Kemp, 481 U.S. 279, 107 S.Ct. 1756, 95 L.Ed.2d 262 (1987), as resolving any remaining doubt as to the viability of comparative-proportionality challenges. The defendant in McCleskey was a black man convicted of killing a white police officer. After he was sentenced to death, McCleskey argued that his sentence violated the Eighth Amendment. McCleskey relied on statistical evidence of “a disparity in the imposition of the death sentence in Georgia based on the race of the murder victim and, to a lesser extent, the race of the defendant.” Id. at 286, 107 S.Ct. 1756. He also maintained “that the sentence in his case is disproportionate to the sentences in other murder cases.” Id. at 306, 107 S.Ct. *6061756. Citing Pulley, the Supreme Court rejected McCleskey’s challenge and upheld his death sentence. McCleskey, the Court explained, could not “prove a constitutional violation by demonstrating that other defendants who may be similarly situated did not receive the death penalty.” Id. at 306-07, 107 S.Ct. 1756 (emphasis in original). The Court reasoned that the possibility that juries in other cases may have acted out of “discretionary leniency” and declined to impose the death penalty did not render death sentences that were imposed “arbitrary and capricious.” Id. at 307, 107 S.Ct. 1756.
In rejecting McCleskey’s comparative proportionality argument, the Supreme Court appended a lengthy footnote to explain why “[t]he Constitution is not offended by inconsistency in results based on the objective circumstances of the crime.” Id. at 307 n. 28, 107 S.Ct. 1756. The Court elaborated:
Numerous legitimate factors may influence the outcome of a trial and a defendant’s ultimate sentence, even though they may be irrelevant to his actual guilt. If sufficient evidence to link a suspect to a crime cannot be found, he will not be charged. The capability of the responsible law enforcement agency can vary widely. Also, the strength of the available evidence remains a variable throughout the criminal justice process and may influence a prosecutor’s decision to offer a plea bargain or to go to trial. Witness availability, credibility, and memory also influence the results of prosecutions. Finally, sentencing in state courts is generally discretionary, so a defendant’s ultimate sentence necessarily will vary according to the judgment of the sentencing authority. The foregoing factors necessarily exist in varying degrees throughout our criminal justice system.
Id. These practical difficulties inherent in reviewing discretionary sentencing decisions mirror the concerns expressed by the Court when it rebuffed a challenge to seemingly inconsistent jury verdicts in Powell. See 469 U.S. at 64-67, 105 S.Ct. 471. As the Court noted in both Powell and McCleskey, the power of the jury to express “the collective judgment of the community” through a compromise verdict or the exercise of mercy may lead to imperfect outcomes, but they are outcomes that are just as likely to benefit criminal defendants as to prejudice them. See id. at 67, 105 S.Ct. 471; McCleskey, 481 U.S. at 307, 107 S.Ct. 1756.
The majority’s proportionality holding, as applied in this case, leads to exactly the type of “imprudent and unworkable” results that the Supreme Court warned against in Powell. See 469 U.S. at 66, 105 S.Ct. 471. Without intending a parade of horribles, I offer two examples that I believe demonstrate the illogical consequences to which the majority’s rule leads. Assume that, unlike in the present case, the jury did not find the murder-for-hire specification and recommended that Getsy be sentenced to life in prison. The majority’s rule would appear to prevent the state, at the subsequent trial of Santine, from seeking the death penalty on the basis of murder for hire, since Santine could point to the jury verdict in Getsy’s case and allege inconsistency. Alternatively, what if Santine had fled the jurisdiction and was not located and brought to trial until well after Getsy’s conviction or, worse still, until after Getsy was executed? If the jury at his much-later trial failed to find the murder-for-hire specification, would Get-sy’s death sentence become unconstitutional years after the fact? These examples, which are just two of many that one could posit, expose as “imprudent and unworkable” a rule that makes the validity of one person’s conviction and sentence contin*607gent upon the verdict of another jury at the later trial of his or her “partner in crime.”
Beyond these practical concerns, case-law from our sister circuits provides a strong indication that the majority’s proportionality theory runs directly counter to the Supreme Court’s holdings in McCles-key and Pulley. The Tenth Circuit, for example, has rejected under similar factual circumstances the same comparative proportionality argument advanced by Getsy and endorsed by the majority. See Hatch v. Oklahoma, 58 F.3d 1447, 1466 (10th Cir.1995). In Hatch, the defendant’s accomplice, Glen Burton Ake, entered the home of Richard and Marilyn Douglass by pretending that he was lost and requesting directions from the Douglasses. Id. at 1451. Ake then retrieved a firearm from the car, and he and Steven Hatch reentered the home, both armed. Id. The duo bound and gagged Richard and Marilyn, as well as their son Brooks, and attempted to rape the Douglasses’ 12-year-old daughter. Id. Ake then told Hatch to return to the car, to prepare it for their departure, and to “wait for the sound.” Id. After Hatch left the house, Ake shot each of the Douglasses, killing the parents and wounding both children.
The two defendants were tried separately. Hatch waived his right to a jury trial, while Ake availed himself of that right. After various appeals, Hatch was sentenced to death, and the Oklahoma state courts affirmed. Id. at 1452. Ake’s case eventually reached the United States Supreme Court, which reversed his conviction and remanded for a new trial. Ake v. Oklahoma, 470 U.S. 68, 74, 105 S.Ct. 1087, 84 L.Ed.2d 53 (1985). The jury at the second trial convicted Ake of first-degree murder and shooting with intent to kill, but recommended a life sentence, which the trial judge imposed. See Ake v. State, 778 P.2d 460, 461-62 (Okla.Crim.App. 1989).
Before the Tenth Circuit, Hatch argued “that the Constitution require[d] that he receive a sentence proportional to others who have committed the same offense.” Hatch, 58 F.3d at 1466. Hatch maintained that, because Ake was “more culpable for the murders,” Hatch’s “sentence should be no more severe than his codefendant,” who received life imprisonment. Id. at 1466 & n. 14. The Tenth Circuit acknowledged that the Supreme Court’s decision in Pulley had directly dealt with “appellate court review for proportionality in relation to all defendants.” Id. at 1466 (emphasis in original). What Hatch sought was slightly different — “a proportionality review of his sentence relative only to his codefendant.” Id. The Tenth Circuit found this distinction irrelevant for constitutional purposes, concluding that Pulley foreclosed Hatch’s challenge. Hatch, the court held, “was constitutionally entitled to a determination of his individual culpability, and he received that individualized consideration. The Constitution does not demand that he receive a review of his comparative responsibility as well.” Id. (citation omitted); see also Bush v. Singletary, 99 F.3d 373, 375 (11th Cir.1996) (per curiam) (holding that a successive habeas petitioner did not raise a federal constitutional claim by arguing that his death sentence was disproportionate to that of his codefendant, whose death sentence had been vacated on appeal); Russell v. Collins, 998 F.2d 1287, 1294 (5th Cir.1993) (denying relief to a habeas petitioner who argued that his death sentence was disproportionate to that of a codefen-dant who had pled guilty and had been sentenced to 60 years in jail).
Similarly, both the jury and the Ohio courts on appellate review have provided Getsy with “a determination of his individual culpability.” Hatch, 58 F.3d at 1466. *608They have concluded that Getsy shot and killed Ann Serafino, that the evidence supports the finding of three specifications (murder for hire, felony murder, and attempting to kill two or more persons), and that the aggravating circumstances outweigh the mitigating ones. The Ohio Supreme Court, employing a type of proportionality review that this court has upheld, see Buell, 274 F.3d at 368-69, also found that Getsy’s sentence was not disproportionate to those imposed on others convicted of similar crimes and sentenced to death. See State v. Getsy, 84 Ohio St.3d 180, 702 N.E.2d 866, 892 (Ohio 1998).
Nothing more is required by the Constitution. See McCleskey, 481 U.S. at 306, 107 S.Ct. 1756 (reaffirming Pulley’s holding that comparative “proportionality review is not constitutionally required”); see also Hatch, 58 F.3d at 1466 (citing cases from the Fourth, Fifth, and Eighth circuits agreeing that comparative proportionality review is not constitutionally mandated). Because comparative proportionality review is not constitutionally required, and because the Supreme Court and our sister circuits have rejected a proportionality argument substantially similar to the one advanced by Getsy, I believe that the majority has erred in adopting a contrary position.
The majority has responded to my discussion of proportionality by arguing that this court’s precedents upholding the Ohio Supreme Court’s system of proportionality review against constitutional challenges do not control in the present ease because Getsy “does not challenge Ohio’s system of proportionality review.” Maj. Op. at 586 n.2. Rather, the majority says, Getsy is challenging only the application of that system to his case. Id. I find this response unconvincing for two reasons. First, the majority is wrong as a matter of fact. Getsy spends approximately five pages in his appellate brief attacking the validity of Ohio’s system of proportionality review. (Appellant’s Br. at 120-125) Second, even if Getsy is challenging only the application of the proportionality review scheme to his case (as opposed to the constitutionality of the system as a whole), the majority has misconceived the import of this court’s precedents.
The cases of Williams, Wickline, Smith, and Buell all uphold a particular type of proportionality review conducted by the Ohio Supreme Court, which compares the individual death sentence at issue with “previous cases in which the death penalty has been imposed.” Wickline, 319 F.3d at 824-25. That is to say, the Ohio Supreme Court specifically excludes from the precedents used for comparison those cases in which defendants, like Santine, received a sentence of life imprisonment. But what the majority holds, in essence, is that the Ohio Supreme Court unreasonably applied clearly established federal law by refusing to conclude that Getsy’s sentence is disproportionate to the one received by Santine, even though this court has consistently held that the Ohio Supreme Court is not obligated to consider the life sentence of a coconspirator at all. I cannot accept the notion that a state court’s failure to consider something that this court has repeatedly said that it need not consider can constitute reversible constitutional error and serve as the basis for habeas corpus relief.
To sum up, I believe that the rule announced by the majority is a new rule of constitutional law that conflicts with Supreme Court precedents rejecting substantially similar arguments. Caselaw from both this court and our sister circuits confirms that the only type of proportionality review mandated by the Constitution is an evaluation of “the appropriateness of a sentence for a particular crime,” not the appropriateness of a sentence relative to *609the one received by other participants in the crime. See Pulley, 465 U.S. at 42-43, 104 S.Ct. 871. Nothing cited by the majority persuades me otherwise. I thus believe, that the decision that is contrary to clearly established federal law is not the one rendered by the Ohio Supreme Court, but that of the majority today.
3. Inconsistent verdicts at separate trials do not implicate Furman
The majority further asserts, without support, that the common-law rule of consistency informs the inquiry into whether a death sentence is unconstitutionally arbitrary under Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238, 92 S.Ct. 2726, 33 L.Ed.2d 346 (1972). Maj. Op. at 6, 15. Furman was a fractured 5-4 decision by the Supreme Court that effectively created a temporary moratorium on capital punishment in the United States. No single rationale united the five justices who found the death penalty as then administered “cruel and unusual” within the meaning of the Eighth Amendment, and subsequent decisions of the Court demonstrate that the majority’s reliance on Furman is unavailing as a basis to set aside Getsy’s sentence.
One way in which I believe that the majority misconceives the significance of Furman is by failing to acknowledge the manner in which the Supreme Court has subsequently interpreted its decision in that case. In Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U.S. 153, 96 S.Ct. 2909, 49 L.Ed.2d 859 (1976), for example, the Court upheld the constitutionality of Georgia’s death penalty system — a modified version of the system that it had declared unconstitutional in Fur-man. The petitioner in Gregg challenged, on the strength of Furman, the continued chance that the discretionary nature of the Georgia system would result in the arbitrary imposition of the death penalty in murder cases. But the Court rejected this argument, describing Furman as holding “only that, in order to minimize the risk that the death penalty would be imposed on a capriciously selected group of offenders, the decision to impose it had to be guided by standards so that the sentencing authority would focus on the particularized circumstances of the crime and the defendant.” Id. at 199, 96 S.Ct. 2909 (joint opinion of Stewart, Powell, and Stevens, JJ.); see also Blystone v. Pennsylvania, 494 U.S. 299, 314, 110 S.Ct. 1078, 108 L.Ed.2d 255 (1990) (“In Furman, the Court held that vesting the sentencer with unbridled discretion to determine whether or not to impose the death penalty resulted in a system in which there was no objective way to distinguish between defendants who received the death penalty and those who did not.”).
The jury at the sentencing phase of Getsy’s trial “focus[ed] on the particularized circumstances of the crime and the defendant,” Gregg, 428 U.S. at 199, 96 S.Ct. 2909 (joint opinion of Stewart, Powell, and Stevens, JJ.), and the majority does not contend otherwise. Nor does the majority claim that Ohio’s capital punishment system “vest[ed] the sentencer with unbridled discretion to determine whether or not to impose the death penalty” in his case. Blystone, 494 U.S. at 314, 110 S.Ct. 1078. Such claims would in any event be contrary to both law and fact because Ohio’s sentencing regime requires the jury to find statutory aggravating factors before it can impose the death penalty, and to weigh those factors against any mitigating circumstances, which is exactly what the jury did in the present case.
I also believe that the majority misconceives the applicability of Furman in two other ways. One is its failure to recognize that Furman focused not on the unfairness or arbitrariness of individual death sentences, but on the arbitrariness of state *610capital-punishment regimes as a whole. See Gregg, 428 U.S. at 200, 96 S.Ct. 2909 (joint opinion of Stewart, Powell, and Stevens, JJ.) (“[T]he petitioner looks to the sentencing system as a whole (as the Court did in Furman and we do today) and argues that it fails to reduce sufficiently the risk of arbitrary infliction of death sentences.”). Even the justices most ardently opposed to the death penalty believed that what rendered the regime unconstitutional was its systematic irrationality, not the unjust outcome in a particular case. See, e.g., McCleskey v. Kemp, 481 U.S. 279, 323, 107 S.Ct. 1756, 95 L.Ed.2d 262 (1987) (Brennan, J., joined by Marshall, Blackmun, and Stevens, JJ., dissenting) (stating that “concern for arbitrariness focuses on the rationality of the system as a whole”). Because the Court’s decision in Furman rested primarily on concerns about the irrationality of state capital-sentencing regimes “as a whole,” I disagree with the majority’s characterization of that case as focusing on inconsistent results in individual cases. Maj. Op. at 584-85.
The other way in which I believe the majority misinterprets Furman is by incorporating the rule of consistency, as well as the Supreme Court’s decisions in Morrison and Hartzel, into Furman’s Eighth Amendment principles. Maj. Op. at 590-92. According to the majority, the rule of consistency and Morrison/Hartzel “add[] clarity, detail, and content to the more generalized ‘arbitrariness’ language of Furman.” Maj. Op. at 590. I fail to see, however, how cases decided 28 and 38 years prior to Furman can be used to clarify the Court’s later decision. Instead, I would look to the Court’s more recent interpretations of the Eighth Amendment, all of which, as I have shown above, substantially limit the reach of Furman. I therefore believe that the majority errs in giving an expansive reading to Furman, and that it has created a new rule of constitutional law in doing so.
4. The majority’s rule does not fall within the exceptions to Teague
Because none of the Supreme Court cases cited by the majority “compel” the constitutional rule that it adopts today, that rule is a “new” one that cannot benefit Getsy in his collateral attack on his state conviction and sentence unless “it falls under one of Teague’s exceptions.” See Beard v. Banks, 542 U.S. 406, 411, 416, 124 S.Ct. 2504, 159 L.Ed.2d 494 (2004). Those narrow exceptions are for (1) “rules forbidding punishment of certain primary conduct [or] rules prohibiting a certain category of punishment for a class of defendants because of their status or offense,” and (2) “watershed rules of criminal procedure implicating the fundamental fairness and accuracy of the criminal proceeding.” Id. at 416-17, 124 S.Ct. 2504 (citations and quotation marks omitted).
Neither Getsy’s “status” nor the nature of his criminal offense form the basis for the majority’s rule, so the first exception does not apply. See id. As for the second exception, the Court in Beard “emphasized the limited scope” of the exception, noting that it had “yet to find a new rule that falls under the second Teague exception,” id. at 417, 124 S.Ct. 2504, which includes only those procedural protections as fundamental to the system of criminal justice as the right to counsel. The rule announced by the majority, unlike the right to counsel, is not one that transforms the courts’ “understanding of the bedrock procedural elements essential to the fairness of a proceeding,” id. at 418, 124 S.Ct. 2504 (citation omitted) (emphasis in original). Teague’s limited second exception, therefore, is similarly inapplicable.
*611That the majority’s rule aims to avoid “potentially arbitrary impositions of the death sentence” does not alter either the analysis or the outcome. Id. at 419. Indeed, the Beard Court specifically rejected the argument that rules with such an objective automatically fall under the second Teague exception. The Court explained that all of its Eighth Amendment jurisprudence in the capital-punishment context “is directed toward the enhancement of reliability and accuracy in some sense,” but nonetheless held that “the fact that a new rule removes some remote possibility of arbitrary infliction of the death sentence does not suffice to bring it within Teague’s second exception.” Beard, 542 U.S. at 419-20, 124 S.Ct. 2504 (citation and quotation marks omitted). Because I believe that the majority’s holding constitutes a new rule of constitutional law, and because that rule does not fall within either of the narrow exceptions to Teague’s principle of nonretroactivity, I would deny Getsy any relief on the basis of that rule.
B. AEDPA standard
As the majority acknowledges, Getsy must also demonstrate that the decision of the Ohio Supreme Court is contrary to or an unreasonable application of clearly established federal law as determined by the United States Supreme Court. See 28 U.S.C. 2254(d)(1); Williams v. Taylor, 529 U.S. 362, 412-13, 120 S.Ct. 1495, 146 L.Ed.2d 389 (2000). A legal principle is clearly established only if it constitutes an “old rule” under Teague. See id. at 412, 120 S.Ct. 1495 (explaining that “whatever would qualify as an old rule under [the Court’s] Teague jurisprudence will constitute clearly established Federal law ... under § 2254(d)(1)”) (quotation marks omitted). For the reasons set forth above, I believe that the majority’s rule is new, rather than old, and that the questionable principle announced today does not constitute clearly established federal law.
To the extent that the majority relies on the fact that the Supreme Court has not squarely rejected the rule adopted today, that fact admits to the inconsistency of the majority’s holding with the requirements of AEDPA because it demonstrates that the Court has not yet addressed the issue. The majority insists that relevant Supreme Court “precedents include not only bright-line rules but also the legal principles and standards flowing from precedent.” Maj. Op. at 5 (quoting Ruimveld v. Birkett, 404 F.3d 1006, 1010 (6th Cir.2005)). But whatever the breadth of those “legal principles and standards” may be, this court has held that “[t]he Supreme Court’s silence on a particular issue cannot constitute ‘clearly established’ Federal law.” Hill v. Hofbauer, 337 F.3d 706, 712 n. 3 (6th Cir.2003); see also Taylor v. Withrow, 288 F.3d 846, 855 (6th Cir.2002) (Boggs, J., concurring) (opining that “the silence of the Supreme Court may not be construed as clearly established law sufficient to allow a federal court to reverse a state determination”).
Even if the Supreme Court’s unanimous decision in Powell did not signal the death knell for the rule of consistency, and even if McCleskey and Pulley did not definitively reject the idea of comparative proportionality review, all the majority can say is that the Court has not yet spoken to the rule articulated today. But this court’s cases make abundantly clear that the Supreme Court’s silence on an issue is simply not enough to reverse a state-court decision under AEDPA. I therefore believe that the majority has erred in granting habeas relief on the basis of ambiguities that it perceives to exist (and I do not) in the Court’s caselaw.
*612II. EVIDENTIARY HEARING
I agree with the majority that Getsy made a reasonable attempt to develop the factual basis of his judicial-bias claim and that the strict requirements of AEDPA do not bar his pursuit of this issue. Maj. Op. at 595. Despite overcoming these initial hurdles, however, Getsy is not automatically entitled to an evidentiary hearing. See Fullwood v. Lee, 290 F.3d 663, 681 (4th Cir.2002) (“[E]ven if [the petitioner’s] claim is not precluded by § 2254(e)(2), that does not mean he is entitled to an eviden-tiary hearing — only that he may be.”) (quoting McDonald v. Johnson, 139 F.3d 1056, 1059-60 (5th Cir.1998))(alterations and emphasis in original). Getsy must instead satisfy the criteria contained in the Supreme Court’s pre-AEDPA cases, principally its decision in Townsend v. Sain, 372 U.S. 293, 313, 83 S.Ct. 745, 9 L.Ed.2d 770 (1963), which sets forth six circumstances under which a federal court either may or must grant an evidentiary hearing upon the request of a state habeas petitioner. See Cardwell v. Greene, 152 F.3d 331, 338-39 (4th Cir.1998) (holding that where § 2254(e)(2) does not bar a habeas petitioner’s request for an evidentiary hearing, “the district court may proceed to consider whether a hearing is appropriate, or required under Townsend ”), overruled on other grounds by Bell v. Jarvis, 236 F.3d 149 (4th Cir.2000).
But the six criteria listed in Townsend are relevant only if, as a threshold matter, “the petitioner alleges additional facts that, if true, would entitle him to relief.” Fullwood, 290 F.3d at 681 (citation and quotation marks omitted); see also Davis v. Lambert, 388 F.3d 1052, 1061 (7th Cir.2004) (“Under pre-AEDPA standards, a federal evidentiary hearing is required only if ... the petitioner alleges facts which, if proved, would entitle him to relief .... ”); Insyxiengmay v. Morgan, 403 F.3d 657, 670 (9th Cir.2005) (same). Getsy must therefore point to facts that, if proved, would demonstrate that judicial bias on the part of the state-court trial judge violated his due process rights. See Bracy v. Gramley, 520 U.S. 899, 905, 117 S.Ct. 1793, 138 L.Ed.2d 97 (1997) (explaining that “the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment establishes a constitutional floor” that “requires a fair trial in a fair tribunal, before a judge with no actual bias against the defendant or interest in the outcome of his particular case”) (citations and quotation marks omitted). I do not believe that Getsy has made such a showing.
Getsy’s allegations focus on (1) Judge McKay’s alleged contacts with Getsy’s prosecutor at a party held at the home of the prosecutor’s mother-in-law; and (2) Judge McKay’s conduct in court the day after the party, when he arrived late and wore sunglasses in court. The first of these claims alleges the Judge McKay was biased because of his out-of-court friendship with the prosecutor, whereas the second claim appears to assert that the judge conducted the proceedings in a manner that strongly suggested to the jury that he favored the prosecution. See Wallace v. Bell, 387 F.Supp.2d 728, 737 (E.D.Mich.2005) (explaining the two types of judicial-bias claims, and granting habeas relief where the state-court trial judge called his own witness to bolster the prosecution’s case and the state appellate court failed to recognize that judicial bias is a structural error).
As to his first claim, Getsy seeks the opportunity “to discover the names of other persons at the party or to depose such people.” The thrust of Getsy’s argument, as I understand it, is that Judge McKay must have been socializing with the prosecutor and therefore improperly discussed the pending case with her, or became so *613friendly with her as to favor the prosecution, or both. This court, however, has already held in a capital case that “ex parte contact does not, in itself, evidence any kind of bias.” Alley v. Bell, 307 F.3d 380, 388 (6th Cir.2002) (holding that the habeas petitioner’s allegations that the state-court judge engaged in ex parte communications with jurors during the trial and with the family members of the victim “fail[ed] to present a viable claim of constitutionally-impermissible judicial bias,” and did not entitle the petitioner to an eviden-tiary hearing). The Chief Justice of the Ohio Supreme Court reached the same conclusion in reviewing Getsy’s motion to disqualify Judge McKay, observing that “[t]he mere fact that a judge and an attorney attend the same social event does not mandate the judge’s disqualification from pending cases involving that attorney.” In re Disqualification of McKay, 77 Ohio St.3d 1249, 674 N.E.2d 359 (Ohio 1996).
I agree with the district court that the decision of the Chief Justice, and the subsequent action of the Ohio Supreme Court in adopting his opinion, is not contrary to or an unreasonable application of clearly established federal law. Furthermore, I do not believe that Getsy’s mere allegation that Judge McKay and the prosecutor are both lying and that they did in fact socialize extensively and/or discuss his case at the party entitles him to an evidentiary hearing on the issue. The Supreme Court reaffirmed in Bracy that courts ordinarily “presume that public officials have properly discharged their duties.” 520 U.S. at 909, 117 S.Ct. 1793 (citation and quotation marks omitted). To overcome that presumption, Getsy has offered nothing more than his suspicions that Judge McKay and the prosecutor had extensive contacts, such that Judge McKay developed a “judicial predisposition[ ] ... beyond what is normal and acceptable.” Alley, 307 F.3d at 386 (quoting Liteky v. United States, 510 U.S. 540, 552, 114 S.Ct. 1147, 127 L.Ed.2d 474 (1994)).
An evidentiary hearing, however, should be held only where it “would be meaningful, in that a new hearing would have the potential to advance the petitioner’s claim.” Campbell v. Vaughn, 209 F.3d 280, 287 (3d Cir.2000) (Becker, C.J.). Far from being “meaningful,” Getsy’s plan to question people who attended a party a decade ago about their recollection of the interaction between Judge McKay and the prosecutor threatens to devolve into a fishing expedition that will contribute little if anything to his ultimate claim that Judge McKay denied him “the right to a fair trial in a fair tribunal.” Alley, 307 F.3d at 386.
Getsy also fails to make a colorable showing that Judge McKay’s behavior in court the day after the party and his automobile accident dropped below the “constitutional floor” of judicial conduct. Bracy, 520 U.S. at 904, 117 S.Ct. 1793. As the Bracy Court emphasized, “most questions concerning a judge’s qualifications to hear a case are not constitutional ones,” but are instead “answered by common law, statute, or the professional standards of the bench and bar.” Id. The Second Circuit, in reviewing allegations of misconduct on the part of a state-court trial judge, has similarly pointed out that “federal courts have authority under their supervisory powers to oversee the administration of criminal justice within federal courts [but] lack such authority with respect to state courts. The only commands that federal courts can enforce in state courts are those of the Constitution.” Daye v. Attorney Gen. of New York, 712 F.2d 1566, 1571 (2d Cir.1983) (footnote omitted).
Judge McKay’s regrettable actions outside the courtroom certainly violated Ohio law, as his drunk driving conviction demonstrates. His decision to continue the *614trial despite any lingering physical effects from his consumption of alcohol or the single-car accident may even have been so ill-advised as to fall below the “professional standards of the bench and bar.” Bracy, 520 U.S. at 904, 117 S.Ct. 1793. Getsy, however, has not pointed to any acts by Judge McKay in court following the accident that evince favoritism to the prosecution or that would have signaled to the jury that the judge was on the state’s side. In other words, Getsy has not alleged any facts that, if true, would establish that the conduct of the trial judge violated Getsy’s constitutional rights. See Fullwood, 290 F.3d at 681. Furthermore, the voir dire conducted by another judge revealed that only two jurors had even heard of Judge McKay’s accident and arrest, and all of the jurors agreed that the judge’s personal situation would not affect their disposition of the murder case. I do not believe, under these circumstances, that Judge McKay’s refusal to recuse himself deprived Getsy of “a fair trial in a fair tribunal.” Bracy, 520 U.S. at 904, 117 S.Ct. 1793 (citation and quotation marks omitted).
Finally, even if Getsy’s entitlement to an evidentiary hearing is a closer question than what I believe it to be, we should not be second-guessing the district court’s refusal to conduct such a heax-ing unless that court abused its discretion. See Abdus-Samad v. Bell, 420 F.3d 614, 626 (6th Cir.2005) (reciting that standard of review in affirming the denial of an evidentiary hearing). A district court abuses its discretion where it “applies the incorrect legal standard, misapplies the correct legal standard, or relies upon clearly erroneous findings of fact.” United States v. Martinez, 430 F.3d 317, 326 (6th Cir.2005) (citation and quotation marks omitted). The majority, however, has not subjected Getsy’s request for an evidentiary hearing either to the governing pre-AEDPA requirements or to the highly deferential abuse-of-discretion standard of review. For the reasons stated above, I do not believe that Getsy is entitled to an eviden-tiary hearing under the still-applicable pre-AEDPA standards, and I therefore cannot say that the district court “committed a clear error of judgment” in denying him the requested hearing. Fairport Intern. Exploration, Inc. v. The Captain Lawrence, 245 F.3d 857, 861-62 (6th Cir.2001) (applying the abuse-of-discretion standard in affirming the district court’s denial of an evidentiary hearing) (citation and quotation marks omitted).
III. REMEDY
I have set forth in Parts I and II above what I believe to be the majority’s extraordinary departure from established law and the standard of review in habeas corpus cases. My final disagreement with the majority relates to the remedy prescribed. The majority “reverse[s] and vaeate[s] the judgment below insofar as it leaves undisturbed the death sentence imposed,” but then grants the state 180 days “to reconsider in light of this opinion Getsy’s sentence under Ohio law.” Maj. Op. at 598. This disposition, to say the least, leaves me puzzled — a reaction that I dare say the district court and state courts will share when trying to decipher how to proceed on remand. While purporting to give the state flexibility in resentencing Getsy, the majority has effectively placed the state in a straightjacket. See Maj. Op. at 595 n.7 (“[O]ur rule of consistency holding means that Getsy cannot face retrial on the murder for hire specification.”).
For example, if the district court denies Getsy relief on his judicial-bias claim after the evidentiary hearing, must the court nevertheless issue an unconditional writ with respect to Getsy’s death sentence? The answer, as I understand the majority *615opinion, is “yes.” This is because further state proceedings cannot cure what the majority identifies as the constitutional defect — the failure of the jury at Santine’s separate trial to find the murder-for-hire specification. In other words, Getsy might now be categorically ineligible for the death penalty even though the jury unanimously found beyond a reasonable doubt two other valid capital specifications (felony murder and attempting to kill two or more persons) that could have independently supported a death sentence.
I also assume that the same answer would be required even if the district court finds merit in Getsy’s judicial-bias claim and conditionally grants habeas relief, subject to the state giving him a new trial. Normally the state on retrial could drop the murder-for-hire specification, charge Getsy with the other two capital specifications, and, if a jury convicts him of those specifications, carry out the death sentence. This plausible solution flows from the Supreme Court’s directive that, “in the habeas context, state courts should be given an opportunity to remedy errors that occurred at the state level.” Bell v. Jarvis, 198 F.3d 432, 444 (4th Cir.1999) (citing Hilton v. Braunskill, 481 U.S. 770, 775, 107 S.Ct. 2113, 95 L.Ed.2d 724 (1987)), vacated on other grounds, 236 F.3d 149 (4th Cir.2000). But whether this course would be available in the present case remains unclear, since there is nothing that the state can do — short of declining to seek the death penalty — that would alter the verdict from Santine’s separate trial.
If I am right in this assessment, then the majority has in effect granted an unconditional writ of habeas corpus with respect to the death sentence, because the state has no way to cure the problem created by the majority’s new rule of comparative proportionality. The majority has thus constructively commuted Getsy’s death sentence to a term of life imprisonment. But federal courts lack the power to do this in the exercise of their habeas jurisdiction. See Duhamel v. Collins, 955 F.2d 962, 968 (5th Cir.1992) (“A federal court does not ... have the authority to commute a death sentence to life imprisonment[.]”) (citing Fay v. Noia, 372 U.S. 391, 430-431, 83 S.Ct. 822, 9 L.Ed.2d 837 (1963)); see also Mapes v. Tate, 388 F.3d 187, 194 (6th Cir.2004) (cautioning that, “[a]lthough the death penalty understandably evokes strong passions and emotions, the prevailing interests of federalism and comity demand that federal courts exercise restraint when issuing a writ of habeas corpus ”).
The majority has not cited any cases authorizing a remedy of this nature or scope. My review of the caselaw in this area has likewise revealed none. The types of cases in which federal courts grant unconditional writs that preclude corrective action are truly exceptional ones in which the constitutional provision at issue itself bars further proceedings. See Cave v. Singletary, 84 F.3d 1350, 1357-58 (11th Cir.1996) (Kravitch, J., dissenting) (explaining that retrial or resentencing may be barred where the state violated the defendants’ rights under the Double Jeopardy or Speedy Trial Clauses, or failed to produce constitutionally sufficient evidence). To the extent that the majority believes that the comparative-proportionality rule that it has created fits within one of these narrow exceptions, I disagree. Indeed, the possibility that the rule announced today would require a remedy of this nature cuts strongly against endorsing the rule in the first place.
IV. CONCLUSION
Both the majority and the Ohio Supreme Court have expressed concern over the seemingly incongruous results from the *616separate trials of Getsy and Santine. I share their concern, recognizing at the same time that reasonable people can disagree over the relative moral turpitude of the instigator of an assassination on the one hand and the killer who he hired to carry out the violent act on the other. Nevertheless, I do not believe that I am empowered to answer this philosophical question by bypassing the limitations that both Congress and the Supreme Court have placed upon this court’s power to grant relief under the circumstances of this case.
Perhaps some day the Supreme Court will hold that a comparison between the culpability of a murderer and that of his codefendant is constitutionally required, and that inconsistent verdicts arising from separate trials are unconstitutional. But this is not the law of the land today, and was obviously not the “clearly established law” at the time that the Ohio Supreme Court affirmed Getsy’s conviction and sentence in 1999. For this reason, as well as the others set forth above, I do not believe that the judgment of the Ohio Supreme Court in this case is contrary to or an unreasonable application of clearly established federal law as determined by the United States Supreme Court. I would accordingly affirm the district court’s denial of habeas relief on all of Getsy’s claims. And because Getsy has not alleged any facts that, if true, would entitle him to relief on his claim of judicial bias, I do not believe that the district court abused its discretion in denying him an evidentiary hearing. I therefore respectfully dissent.