Johnson v. Mississippi

In 1982, petitioner was convicted of murder and sentenced to death. The sentence was predicated, in part, on the fact that petitioner had been convicted of a felony in New York in 1963. After the Mississippi Supreme Court affirmed petitioner’s death sentence, the New York Court of Appeals reversed the 1963 conviction. Petitioner thereafter unsuccessfully sought postconviction relief from the Mississippi Supreme Court. The question presented to us is whether the state court was correct in concluding that the reversal of the New York conviction did not affect the validity of a death sentence…