Eric D. Holmes v. Ron Neal

POSNER, Circuit Judge.

In 1992 the petitioner, Eric Holmes, was convicted of a pair of murders committed three years earlier, and the following year he was sentenced to death. On the day of the murders he’d gotten into an argument with a co-worker at the Shoney’s restaurant where he worked. He and a man named Michael Vance approached the coworker and two of the restaurant’s managers, one of whom was carrying the till (containing money) out of the restaurant. They trapped the three in the foyer of the restaurant, stabbed them multiple times, and took the till. Two of the victims died.

Holmes’s…