Greenway

Petitioner, Richard Harley Greenway, was convicted and sentenced to death in 1989 for the 1988 murders of Lili Champagne and her daughter, Mindy Peters. After the Arizona state courts denied Greenway’s post-conviction petition for relief, he filed a petition for federal habeas relief under 28 U.S.C. § 2254 , which the district court denied. On appeal, Green-way is seeking relief on a number of different claims, but we affirm the denial of all except those relating to ineffective assistance of counsel at trial and on direct appeal.

Greenway’s most colorful claim is that the trial judge should have been disqualified from hearing the case because the trial judge himself once briefly worked with the man who had been the husband of victims Lili Champagne and the father of Mindy Peters. The evidence Greenway presented shows, at best, however, that the judge may have had a brief working relationship eighteen years before the trial, with the man who had, by the time of trial, been dead more than eleven years. We agree with the district court that there was no showing of any impropriety or appearance of impropriety.

We affirm the denial of the claims of ineffective assistance of…