Gary Bradford Cone v. Ricky Bell, Warden

OPINION

RYAN, Circuit Judge.

Gary Bradford Cone was sentenced to death in a Tennessee state court for a double murder of an elderly couple and his conviction and death sentence were affirmed by the Tennessee Supreme Court.

On this appeal from the district court’s denial of Cone’s petition for habeas corpus relief, we are asked to decide

• Whether Cone was sentenced to death in violation of the prohibition against cruel or unusual punishment of the Eighth Amendment of the United States Constitution.

Before we may reach that question, however, we must resolve two rather complex and interrelated…