United States v. Daniel Delaney

POSNER, Circuit Judge.

The defendant, a federal prisoner serving a term for unarmed robbery and confined in a two-person cell in the prison’s segregation unit because of a fight he’d had with another inmate, strangled his cellmate. He was prosecuted, convicted by a jury of first-degree murder, and sentenced to life in prison. The single issue presented by his appeal is whether the jury should have found that he killed in “the heat of passion” and should therefore have convicted him only of voluntary manslaughter.

Late one night, as a guard walked past the defendant’s cell, the defendant told…