Tommy Sharp, Interim Warden v. Jimmy Dean Harris

Oklahoma juries sentenced Jimmy Dean Harris to death initially and following a 2005 retrial on the penalty. In his appeal of that sentence, Harris alleged that his counsel was ineffective for not requesting a pre-trial hearing on whether he was intellectually disabled and therefore ineligible for the death penalty. The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals (OCCA) rejected that claim, concluding that the weight of the expert evidence was that Harris was not intellectually disabled. The Tenth Circuit granted Harris habeas relief. The court reviewed the claim de novo, not deferentially, because it concluded that the OCCA based its holding on an “unreasonable determination of the facts.” 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(2). The Tenth Circuit pointed to the OCCA’s statement that “all Harris’s experts, including the ones who testified at his first trial and competency hearing, . . . concluded he was not mentally retarded.” That was untrue, said the Tenth Circuit, because one expert testified that Harris had a mild intellectual disability. The Tenth Circuit concluded this isolated sentence rendered the OCCA’s decision unreasonable in spite of a footnote in which the state court expressly acknowledged that one dissenting expert’s views. The questions presented are: 1. In holding that the OCCA made an “unreasonable determination of the facts,” did the Tenth Circuit contravene this Court’s repeated admonition that “state-court decisions be given the benefit of the doubt,” Cullen v. Pinholster, 563 U.S. 170, 181 (2011);