392
Opinion of the Court
likelihood of a different outcome as legitimate "prejudice." Even if a defendant's false testimony might have persuaded the jury to acquit him, it is not fundamentally unfair to conclude that he was not prejudiced by counsel's interference with his intended perjury. Nix v. Whiteside, 475 U. S. 157, 175-176 (1986).
Similarly, in Lockhart, we concluded that, given the overriding interest in fundamental fairness, the likelihood of a different outcome attributable to an incorrect interpretation of the law should be regarded as a potential "windfall" to the defendant rather than the legitimate "prejudice" contemplated by our opinion in Strickland. The death sentence that Arkansas had imposed on Bobby Ray Fretwell was based on an aggravating circumstance (murder committed for pecuniary gain) that duplicated an element of the underlying felony (murder in the course of a robbery). Shortly before the trial, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit had held that such "double counting" was impermissible, see Collins v. Lockhart, 754 F. 2d 258, 265 (1985), but Fretwell's lawyer (presumably because he was unaware of the Collins decision) failed to object to the use of the pecuniary gain aggravator. Before Fretwell's claim for federal habeas corpus relief reached this Court, the Collins case was overruled.16 Accordingly, even though the Arkansas trial judge probably would have sustained a timely objection to the double counting, it had become clear that the State had a right to rely on the disputed aggravating circumstance. Because the ineffectiveness of Fretwell's counsel had not deprived him of any substantive or procedural right to which the law entitled him, we held that his
16 In Lowenfield v. Phelps, 484 U. S. 231 (1988), we held that an aggravating circumstance may duplicate an element of the capital offense if the class of death-eligible defendants is sufficiently narrowed by the definition of the offense itself. In Perry v. Lockhart, 871 F. 2d 1384 (1989), the Eighth Circuit correctly decided that our decision in Lowenfield required it to overrule Collins.
Page: Index Previous 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007