Robert A. Walls, Appellee/cross-Appellant v. Michael Bowersox, Appellant/cross-Appellee

BEAM, Circuit Judge.

Michael Bowersox appeals the district court’s grant of a writ of habeas corpus to Robert Walls. The district court found that trial counsel was constitutionally ineffective during the sentencing phase of Walls’s capital murder trial and vacated his death sentence. Walls cross-appeals the district court’s adverse holdings on a multitude of other issues. We hold that Walls’s counsel was not constitutionally deficient, find the cross-appeal to be without merit, and reverse.

I. BACKGROUND

Fred C. Harmon, an eighty-eight-year-old widower lived alone in Maplewood, Missouri. On…