Richard Adams Hovey v. Robert L. Ayers, Jr., Acting Warden, California State Prison at San Quentin

Richard Hovey appeals the district court’s denial of his petition for a writ of habeas corpus. He seeks relief from his 1982 conviction and sentence of death for first degree murder during the course of a kidnapping. He asserts that more than a dozen errors infected his trial, principally: denial of the due process right to be present at a mid-trial hearing on his attorney’s competence; ineffective assistance of counsel at the guilt and penalty phases; Griffin error, see Griffin v. California, 380 U.S. 609 , 85 S.Ct. 1229 , 14 L.Ed.2d 106 (1965); Brady error, see Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83 , 83 S.Ct. 1194 , 10 L.Ed.2d 215 (1963); and exclusion of forward-looking evidence to support a proper penalty-phase jury instruction. Because Hovey admitted that he had taken the young victim against her will and committed the acts that resulted in her death, Hovey cannot demonstrate the requisite prejudice to succeed on his claims of error in the guilt phase. The district court, therefore, correctly rejected all of Hovey’s guilt-phase claims, finding a number of errors but determining that none is alone or cumulatively sufficient to merit reversal of Hovey’s conviction. We hold, however,…