Thornton v. State

In the first appeal of this case, a majority of this court erroneously concluded that the evidence was not sufficient to support Thornton’s conviction for capital murder. See Thornton v. State, 2014 Ark, 157, 433 S.W.3d 216 (Goodson, J., dissenting). Today, this court compounds that error by misinterpreting the previous opinion and by misapplying the mandate rule to hold that the circuit court did not have the authority to consider Thornton’s unquestionable guilt of a lesser-included offense. Once again, I must dissent.

|islt should be remembered that this, ease involves the untimely death of…