Whether Mr. Sales's death sentence violates the Sixth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments

QUESTIONS PRESENTED This petition is brought by a capital defendant, Tarus Sales, who was convicted for a murder unilaterally planned and committed by another man: Herschel Ostine. Despite no evidence at trial whatsoever attributing Ostine’s crime to Mr. Sales, Mr. Sales was convicted under Texas’s law of parties on the theory that Ostine’s murder was “committed in furtherance of’ and at least “should have been anticipated as a result of’ a conspiracy between Ostine and Mr. Sales. See Tex. Penal Code Ann. § 7.02(b). Ostine, the shooter, received a sentence of life in prison, while Mr. Sales— who was nowhere near the scene and played no part in the planning or commission of the murder—was sentenced to death. Twelve years later, Mr. Sales discovered new evidence directly contradictory to the theory under which he was convicted and sentenced. Ostine signed a sworn affidavit unequivocally explaining that he independently decided to commit the murder and that Mr. Sales was not involved in Ostine’s crime. Mr. Sales presented this evidence to the state habeas court, corroborated by both Ostine’s live, sworn testimony and the statements of two other individuals with knowledge of Ostine’s crime. The questions presented are: 1. Whether Mr. Sales’s death sentence violates the Sixth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments, where the jury did not and could not find, based on the evidence at trial, that Mr. Sales (as a non-triggerman) intended to kill or acted as a major participant in the shooter’s crime with reckless indifference to human life—as 1 required by this Court’s precedent in Enmund v. Florida, 458 U.S. 782 (1982), Tison v. Arizona, 481 U.S. 1387 (1987), Apprendi v. New Jersey, 530 U.S. 466 (2000), and Ring v. Arizona, 536 U.S. 584 (2002)? 2. Whether the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (““TCCA”) violated Mr. Sales’s Fourteenth Amendment rights by deferring to the trial court’s clearly erroneous findings—based on improper and unequally applied legal principles and facts in direct contravention of clearly established federal law—to apply an inapplicable procedural bar to prevent Mr. Sales’s constitutional claims from being heard? 3. Whether the cumulative impact of the TCCA’s errors outlined in Questions 1 and 2 undermine all confidence in the constitutionality of Mr. Sales’s death sentence, such that no reasonable juror assessing the newly discovered evidence of Mr. Sales’s actual innocence would be able to make a constitutionally sufficient finding at sentencing to warrant the death penalty? i