Ivy T. Tucker v. United States
HabeasCorpus
Whether trial counsel's failure to make an argument that courts of appeals outside the circuit have accepted amounts to constitutionally deficient assistance of counsel
QUESTIONS PRESENTED I. Whether trial counsel’s failure to make an argument that courts of appeals outside the circuit have accepted (and the circuit has not addressed) may amount to constitutionally deficient assistance of counsel or, instead, whether only directly controlling precedent is relevant. II. When a defendant and the Government have agreed that the court will address at sentencing a factual question for purposes of imposing a statutory mandatory-minimum sentence, whether they have also implicitly agreed that the defendant’s “offense of conviction” has “established” the factual finding for purposes of the Sentencing Guidelines.