Angel Francisco Breard v. Fred W. Greene, Warden (523 U.S. 371)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided April 14, 1998 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 523 U.S. 371 · 118 S. Ct. 1352
- Decided
- April 14, 1998
- Term
- October Term 1997
- Vote
- 6–3
- Issue area
- Criminal Procedure
- Disposition
- Petition denied or appeal dismissed
- Outcome
- Petitioning party lost
- Ideological direction
- Conservative
Opinion excerpt
Per Curiam. Angel Francisco Breard is scheduled to be executed by the Commonwealth of Virginia this evening at 9 p.m. Breard, a citizen of Paraguay, came to the United States in 1986, at the age of 20. In 1992, Breard was charged with the attempted rape and capital murder of Ruth Dickie. At his trial in 1993, the State presented overwhelming evidence of guilt, including semen found on Dickie’s body matching Breard’s DNA profile and hairs on Dickie’s body identical in all microscopic characteristics to hair samples taken from Breard. Breard chose to take the witness stand in his defense. During his testimony, Breard confessed to killing Dickie, but explained that he had only done so because of a Satanic curse placed on him by his father-in-law. Following a jury trial in the Circuit Court of Arlington County, Virginia, Breard was convicted of both charges and sentenced to death. On appeal, the Virginia Supreme Court affirmed Breard’s convictions and sentences, Breard v. Commonwealth, 248 Va. 68, 445 S. E. 2d 670 (1994), and we denied certiorari, 513 U. S. 971 (1994). State collateral relief was subsequently denied as well. Breard then filed a motion for habeas, relief under 28 U. S. C. §2254 in Federal District Court on August 20, 1996. In that motion, Breard argued for the first time that his convictions and sentences should be overturned because of alleged violations of the…
Excerpt of a 13,512-character opinion. The full text and citation network load in the interactive viewer above.