Robert W. Hassett, III v. Delaware

Whether the Eighth^hdil’4th Amendments to the United States Constitution are violated, and this Court’s holdings are contradicted,1 when a court has stated, on record, that they had sentenced a person under a capital sentencing statute for a non-capital offense, applying firstdegree murder to a non-capital offense despite that state’s supreme court holding a first-degree murder conviction automatically authorized a possible death sentence to be imposed, and upon a conviction for first-degree murder, that state’s written legislation separates it from all other non­ capital offenses and gives procedural requirements that a death penalty hearing be held?

Whether the Sixth, Eighth, and 14th Amendments to the United States Constitution are violated when a court applies a capital offense to a non-capital case, obtains a conviction on that purported capital offense by inaccurate and misleading instructions to the jury, imposes a sentence under a capital sentencing statute for a non-capital offense, and then subsequently justifies its rationale through reliance upon an Ex Post Facto principle despite that same state’s supreme court previously holding the offense in fact of law authorized a possible death sentence and that state has enacted procedural law dictating that, upon a conviction, a death penalty hearing shall be performed? *

If, under the Eighth and 14th Amendments to the United States Constitution, by legal definition a capital offense is one in which a possible sentence of death can be imposed and said 1 See, e.g., Apprendi v. New Jersey, 536 U.S. 466 (2000); Ringv. Arizona, 536 U.S. 545 (2002); Erlingerv. United States, 2024 U.S. LEXIS 2715 (2024). '