Vickers

Appellant Robert Vickers was an inmate on Arizona’s death row when he burned a fellow inmate to death by splashing burning liquid through the food slot of the victim’s cell. Vickers started the fire with an incendiary device he created by pouring bottles of hair tonic into an empty ice cream container, stuffing a tissue inside and lighting it. A jury convicted Vickers of first degree murder and the trial judge sentenced him to death. This is an appeal from the district court’s *615 denial of Vickers’ first federal petition for writ of habeas corpus.

The facts are set forth in the Arizona Supreme Court’s opinion affirming the conviction and sentence. State v. Vickers, 159 Ariz. 532 , 768 P.2d 1177 (1989). They are not materially disputed. Immediately preceding the burning, Vickers had shown to the victim, Wilmar “Buster” Holsinger, a letter and drawing from his niece. This elicited an obscene comment from Holsinger about the niece. Vickers at the time was on clean up-duty in the central area of a “pod” containing four death row cells. Vickers returned to his cell, made the incendiary device and repeatedly splashed, the burning liquid into Holsinger’s cell while the prison guard…