A divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit rejected a death-row inmate's appeal of the denial of his habeas petition in Henley v. Bell. Steve Henley was sentenced to death in Tennessee after his conviction on two counts of first-degree murder and aggravated arson. He filed a habeas petition alleging twenty-one errors in the state court proceedings. A federal district court denied all of Henley's claims, and Henley appealed on six issues.

In Henley v. Bell, Judge Cook wrote for herself and Judge Siler, rejecting all six of Henley's claims. Judge Cole dissented in part, as he would have granted Henley's ineffective assistance of counsel at sentencing claim and would have granted an evientiary hearing on Henley's due process challenge to "the systematic exclusion of women . . . from the position of grand-jury foreperson."

UPDATE: Habeas corpus petitions are not the only source of divided opinions on the Sixth. Doug Berman discusses an interesting sentencing case that divided the Sixth Circuit here. And for something completely different, check out the opinions in this case dividing over the proper remedy in an ERISA case (it's actually more interesting than it sounds).