State v. Cheatham

The opinion of the court was delivered by

Biles, J.:

In this capital murder case resulting from a double homicide and shooting of a third victim, Phillip D. Cheatham, Jr. *419was convicted and sentenced to death. On direct appeal to this court, he claims he was denied his light to a fair trial due to ineffective assistance of counsel. Cheatham characterizes his trial attorney’s performance as a “cornucopia of. . . ineptness” based on both performance deficiencies and conflict of interest.

We bifurcated his ineffectiveness arguments from other claimed trial errors and remanded to the district court…