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CRIMINAL LAW & PROCEDURE, EVIDENCE, HABEAS CORPUS, PER CURIAM McDaniel v. Brown, No. 08-559 In habeas proceedings arising from a rape conviction, a circuit court of appeals’ order affirming the grant of petitioner’s habeas petition is reversed and remanded where: 1) the court of appeals’ analysis failed to preserve the factfinder’s role as weigher of the evidence by reviewing all of the evidence in the light most favorable to the prosecution, and it erred in finding a state court’s resolution of petitioner’s claim to be objectively unreasonable; and 2) petitioner forfeited his claim that a prosecution expert incorrectly described the statistical implications of certain DNA evidence.
CRIMINAL LAW & PROCEDURE, HABEAS CORPUS, SENTENCING Smith v. Spisak, No. 08–724 In capital habeas proceedings, a grant of petitioner’s habeas petition is reversed where a state court’s rejection of claimed errors regarding jury instructions and verdict forms, as well as ineffective assistance of counsel, was not contrary to, or an unreasonable application of, clearly established federal law as: 1) the jury instructions and forms in the penalty phase made clear that, to recommend a death sentence, the jury had to find unanimously that each of the aggravating factors outweighed any mitigating circumstances, but they did not say that the jury had to determine the existence of each individual mitigating factor unanimously; and 2) even assuming that defense counsel’s closing argument was inadequate in the respects claimed by petitioner, there was no reasonable probability that a better closing argument without such defects would have made a significant difference.
