Ricky Bell, Warden v. Gary Bradford Cone (543 U.S. 447)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided January 24, 2005 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 543 U.S. 447 · 125 S. Ct. 847
- Decided
- January 24, 2005
- Term
- October Term 2004
- Vote
- 9–0
- Issue area
- Judicial Power
- Disposition
- Reversed and remanded
- Outcome
- Petitioning party won
- Ideological direction
- Conservative
Opinion excerpt
Per Curiam. The United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit granted a writ of habeas corpus to respondent Gary Bradford Cone after concluding that the “especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel” aggravating circumstance found by the jury at the sentencing phase of his trial was unconstitutionally vague, and that the Tennessee Supreme Court failed to cure any constitutional deficiencies on appeal. 359 F. 3d 785, 799 (2004). Because this result fails to accord to the state court the deference required by 28 U. S. C. § 2254(d), we grant the petition for certiorari and respondent’s motion to proceed in forma pauperis and reverse. I Respondent killed Shipley Todd, 93, and his wife Cleopatra, 79, on August 10,1980, in their home at the conclusion of a 2-day crime spree. The killings were accomplished in a brutal and callous fashion: The elderly victims were “repeatedly beaten about the head until they died,” State v. Cone, 665 S. W. 2d 87, 90-91 (Tenn. 1984), and their bodies were subsequently discovered “horribly mutilated and cruelly beaten,” id., at 90. A Tennessee jury convicted respondent of, inter alia, two counts of murder in the first degree and two counts of murder in the first degree in the perpetration of a burglary. At the conclusion of the penalty phase of respondent’s trial, the jury unanimously found four aggravating circumstances and concluded that they…
Excerpt of a 26,169-character opinion. The full text and citation network load in the interactive viewer above.