Cite as: 540 U. S. 668 (2004)
Opinion of the Court
counsel discretely, not cumulatively. App. to Pet. for Cert. A46-A47. Finally, in accord with the District Court, the Court of Appeals apparently regarded Rule 15(b) as inapplicable in habeas proceedings. App. to Pet. for Cert. A51- A52. The Fifth Circuit accordingly denied a certificate of appealability on the Cook Brady transcript-suppression claim. App. to Pet. for Cert. A52, A78.
With an execution date set for March 12, 2003, Banks applied to this Court for a writ of certiorari, presenting four issues: the tenability of his Farr Brady claim; a penalty-phase ineffective-assistance-of-counsel claim; the question whether, as to the Cook Brady transcript-suppression claim, a certificate of appealability was wrongly denied; and a claim of improper exclusion of minority jurors in violation of Swain v. Alabama, 380 U. S. 202 (1965). Pet. for Cert. 23- 24. We stayed Banks's execution on March 12, 2003, 538 U. S. 917, and, on April 21, 2003, granted his petition on all questions other than his Swain claim. 538 U. S. 977. We now reverse the Court of Appeals' judgment dismissing Banks's Farr Brady claim and that Court's denial of a certificate of appealability on his Cook Brady claim.10
II
We note, initially, that Banks's Brady claims arose under the regime in place prior to the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA), 110 Stat. 1214. Turning to the tenability of those claims, we consider first Banks's Farr Brady claim as it trains on his death sentence, see App. to Pet. for Cert. B6 (District Court granted habeas solely with respect to the capital sentence), and next, Banks's Cook Brady claim.
10 Our disposition of the Farr Brady claim, and our conclusion that a writ of habeas corpus should issue with respect to the death sentence, render it unnecessary to address Banks's claim of ineffective assistance of counsel at the penalty phase; any relief he could obtain on that claim would be cumulative.
689
Page: Index Previous 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007