Summary
U. S. Supreme Court ruling allowing a condemned cop killer to raise on appeal an allegation challenging his conviction on federal habeas corpus even though it had been rejected by a lower court. The case involved the conviction of Robert Lee Jennings for murdering a Houston police officer during a 1988 robbery. After his conviction and sentence had been upheld by the state’s highest court on direct appeal, Jennings raised allegations challenging the competence of his trial attorney before a federal district court on habeas corpus. The court denied one of his allegations, but accepted others. When the federal appeals court refused to hear the denied allegation on appeal, the Supreme Court agreed to review that holding. CJLF joined the case seeking a decision requiring that all allegations included in a claim of ineffective assistance of counsel be considered together as one claim on appeal, even if a lower court denies some of them. A decision requiring this would have simplified and shortened the post-conviction review of death penalty cases. In its ruling, the court chose not to confront the "claim" issue, but allowed the defendant to raise his rejected allegation.
