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

How courts have described this case

Verbatim parenthetical descriptions written by other courts when citing this decision. Ranked by citation-network relevance.

• holding that a hearing on defense counsel’s competency was not a \critical\ stage of trial
• noting that even where a defendant has been convicted of horrible crimes, a sentencer may still choose to impose a life sentence when confronted with mitigating evi- dence
• stating that an “actual conflict is defined by its impact”
• any Griffin error harmless where challenged comments were isolated comments and minimal in comparison with the weight of the evidence
• the defendant abducted and killed an eight-year old girl; she was found with numerous depressed skull fractures and laceration wounds
• defendant kidnapped and killed an eight- year old girl and also had kidnapped another young girl on a separate occasion

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).