# Harold Wayne Nichols v. Stanton Heidle, Warden

> Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit · July 25, 2013 · 725 F.3d 516

URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9519946

## Case

- **Full name:** Harold Wayne NICHOLS, Petitioner-Appellant, v. Stanton HEIDLE, Warden, Respondent-Appellee
- **Court:** Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit
- **Decided:** July 25, 2013
- **Citations:** 725 F.3d 516; 2013 U.S. App. LEXIS 15103; 2013 WL 3821537
- **Precedential status:** Published
- **Opinion:** Concurrence by Martin
- **Judges:** Batchelder, Martin, Cook
- **Cited by:** 25 later opinions in the Frix Law Library

## Citator (automated)

- No negative treatment found by the automated citator. That is not the same as a confirmation that the case is good law; read the citing cases.
- Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9519946

## How later opinions describe it (automated extraction)

- noting, inter alia, pro- tracted nature of death penalty cases, which, in turn, provides ‘‘no closure for the families of the victims’’

## Opinion text

BOYCE F. MARTIN, JR., Circuit Judge,
concurring.
In this, my last death penalty case as a judge on the Sixth Circuit, I must concur in affirming the judgment of the district court. Despite my concurrence, I continue to condemn the use of the death penalty as an arbitrary, biased, and broken criminal justice tool. The facts of this case make it one of the more tragic and disturbing cases that I have heard in years. While Nichols’ actions are despicable, I cannot ignore the fact that his actions were committed in the late 1980s and that he was convicted in 1990. Nichols’ execution was supposed to take place in 1994. I have been on this bench since 1979, and for twenty-three of my thirty-four years as a judge on this Court this case has been moving through our justice system, consuming countless judicial hours, money, legal resources, and providing no closure for the families of the victims. Retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens has called for a dispassionate and impartial comparison of the enormous cost that death penalty litigation imposes on society with the benefits it produces. The time, money, and energy spent trying to secure the death of this defendant would have been better spent improving this country’s mental-health and educational institutions, which may help prevent crimes such as the ones we are presented with today.

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Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9519946. Public record. Not legal advice.