Marlon Latodd Howell, Aka Marlon Cox v. Mississippi (543 U.S. 440)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided January 24, 2005 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 543 U.S. 440 · 125 S. Ct. 856
- Decided
- January 24, 2005
- Term
- October Term 2004
- Vote
- 9–0
- Issue area
- Judicial Power
- Disposition
- Petition denied or appeal dismissed
- Outcome
- Petitioning party lost
- Ideological direction
- Conservative
Opinion excerpt
Per Curiam. Petitioner Marlon Howell contends that the Mississippi courts violated his rights under the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution by refusing to require a jury instruction about a lesser included offense in his capital case. He did not, however, raise this claim in the Supreme Court of Mississippi, which unsurprisingly did not address it. As a result, we dismiss the writ of certiorari as improvidently granted. Petitioner was convicted and sentenced to death for killing Hugh David Pernell. Shortly after 5 a.m. on May 15, 2000, Pernell was delivering newspapers from his car when the occupants of another car motioned for him to stop. The evidence at trial indicated that, when both cars had pulled over, petitioner got out of the trailing car and approached the driver’s side of Pernell’s car. After a brief conversation and perhaps some kind of scuffle, petitioner pulled out a pistol, shot Pernell through the heart, got back in the other ear, and fled the scene. See 860 So. 2d 704, 712-715,738-739 (Miss. 2003). At trial, petitioner argued both that he was in another city at the time of the killing and that the evidence was insufficient to prove that Pernell was killed during an attempted robbery (which would deprive the State of an element of capital murder). As part of his nonalibi defense, petitioner sought to supplement the State’s…
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