Harold Wayne Nichols v. Stanton Heidle, Warden

OPINION

ALICE M. BATCHELDER, Chief Judge.

Petitioner Harold Wayne Nichols, a Tennessee state prisoner awaiting execution, appeals on several grounds the district court’s denial of his petition for writ of habeas corpus. Finding no merit in any of these grounds, we AFFIRM.

I

A. Background

By any measure, Wayne Nichols had an oppressive and forlorn childhood, due to his father’s abuse, his mother’s illness, their poverty, and the church-dominated society into which he was born. Born December 31, 1960, to a poor family in Cleveland, Tennessee, near Chattanooga, he lived in a tiny, run-down house with…