In re: Coley

In 1998, a jury convicted Coley of attempted murder, two counts each of kidnapping and aggravated robbery, and three counts of aggravated murder (with the felony-murder aggravating circumstance attached to each count). He was sentenced to death. After unsuccessfully pursuing state-court relief, he unsuccessfully sought federal habeas relief in 2003. In 2017, Coley filed a new federal habeas petition. The Sixth Circuit denied Coley permission to file a second or successive petition under 28 U.S.C. 2254, based on his argument that the Supreme Court’s 2016 decision, Hurst v. Florida, rendered Ohio’s death-penalty scheme unconstitutional. Even if Hurst announced “a new rule of constitutional law,” the Supreme Court has not “made [Hurst] retroactive to cases on collateral review.” While not all second-in-time petitions are “second or successive,” it “cannot be that every new legal rule, including those not made retroactive on collateral review, also constitutes a new factual predicate,” and Coley has not shown that the facts underlying his claim “would be sufficient to establish by clear and convincing evidence” that no reasonable juror would have found him guilty. View "In re: Coley" on Justia Law