Robert Sawyer v. Robert H. Butler, Sr., Warden, Louisiana State Penitentiary

PATRICK E. HIGGINBOTHAM, Circuit Judge:

Robert Sawyer was sentenced to death by a Louisiana jury on September 19, 1980 for the brutal slaying of Frances Arwood. Today we decide his appeal from the denial by a United States District Court of his petition for writ of habeas corpus. We have elsewhere recorded the long history of Sawyer’s efforts to overturn his conviction.2 Sawyer’s attack has now boiled *1276down to three arguments. First, he argues that his court-appointed trial counsel was ineffective in certain respects. Second, and closely related to the first, he argues that his conviction…