¶1 III
¶2 Absent this Court's intervention, Lance may well be executed without any adequately informed jury having decided his fate. Because the Court's refusal to intervene permits an egregious breakdown of basic procedural safeguards to go unremedied, I respectfully dissent.
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Case posture Subsequent history <p>The Superior Court granted Lance's habeas petition and vacated his death sentence, holding that trial counsel's failure to investigate and present evidence of Lance's mental condition was deficient performance, and that his failure prejudiced Lance. The missing evidence could have prompted a different sentence, the court explained, because it went directly to the key issue before the jury: the assessment of Lance's character, culpability, and worth.</p> <p>Lance sought a federal writ of habeas corpus. The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia denied the petition but granted a certificate of appealability. Under the deferential review provisions of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d), the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit affirmed, holding that the Georgia Supreme Court's conclusion that the absence of the postconviction mental health evidence caused Lance no prejudice was not unreasonable. Lance v. Warden, 706 Fed.Appx. 565, 573 (2017).</p> Source: CourtListener
