Sivak

Dixie Wilson was murdered on April 6, 1981, while she was working at the Baird Oil gas station in Garden City, Idaho. Approximately $385 was taken from the station’s cash drawer and safe. Both Petitioner Lacey Sivak and his co-defendant Randall Bainbridge (who was tried separately) admitted that they were present when the crime occurred, but each insisted that the other was responsible for the murder and robbery. The jury convicted Sivak of felony murder and/or aiding and abetting felony murder, but acquitted him of pre-meditated murder. The trial judge then imposed the death penalty. After pursuing other remedies, Sivak filed a federal habeas petition before the effective date of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA). The district court denied him relief.

Although we reject many of Sivak’s contentions on appeal, we conclude that absent the State’s knowing presentation of perjured inmate testimony, the result of Sivak’s penalty-phase hearing could have been different. The only direct evidence establishing that Sivak, not Bainbridge, committed the murder came from Bainbridge’s unsworn statement during a police interrogation, and a pair of…