Jeffrey Timothy Landrigan, A.K.A. Billy Patrick Wayne Hill v. Terry Stewart, Director, Arizona Department of Corrections

Jeffrey Timothy Landrigan was convicted of the murder of Chester Dean Dyer in the state of Arizona and was sentenced to death. His conviction was affirmed by the Supreme Court of Arizona on direct review, his state petition for post-conviction relief was denied by the state courts, and his petition for habeas corpus under 28 U.S.C. § 2254 was denied by the district court. He appealed and his primary claim is that counsel was ineffective at sentencing. We affirm.

BACKGROUND

In early November of 1989, Landrigan was incarcerated in an Oklahoma Department of Corrections Facility. He was serving a term of 20 years imprisonment for the murder of his “best friend,” Greg Brown; he had stabbed Brown to death in 1982, and had been in prison since then. While in custody, Landrigan had not been quiescent. -He had an argument with another prison inmate and repeatedly stabbed him, a crime for which Landrigan was convicted in March of 1986.

Alas, on November 10, 1989, Landrigan escaped from custody in Oklahoma, and soon surfaced in Phoenix, Arizona. Within a month, he had met the victim, Chester Dean Dyer, a homosexual man who often tried to pick up other men by flashing a wad of money. On…