Whether the Nevada Supreme Court's decision rejecting the legal insufficiency claim was unreasonable because, even under a highly deferential review, no rational juror could have concluded Weakland killed Hilda when his description of the manner of death was inconsistent in every way with the physical evidence?

QUESTION PRESENTED The year was 1974. The town—Las Vegas. Organized crime dominated the Strip. Gangsters and their associates controlled the casinos. Mafia syndicates had found a river of money flowing through the parched desert valley, and they protected it at all costs. This setting has produced many wild stories, but none as incredible as Frank LaPena’s. His odyssey began when the State accused him of an unlikely crime, one that seems ripped from the pages of a pulp novel. Frank was a handsome young bell captain at the Hacienda. He was dating Rosalie Maxwell, a beautiful cocktail waitress at Caesars. Rosalie was two-timing Frank with Marvin Krause, a middleaged slot manager (also at Caesars). Marvin showered Rosalie with cash and gifts, but Marvin’s wife Hilda controlled the Krause fortune. According to the State, Frank and Rosalie wanted Hilda’s money, and they hatched a convoluted plot to get it. They hired their pal Jerry Weakland to kill Hilda. With Hilda gone, Rosalie would swoop in and marry Marvin. Then something untoward might happen to Marvin. By the end of this scheme, the money would have passed from Hilda to Marvin and then to Rosalie—with Frank, her true love, waiting in the wings to share it. At least, that’s the story Weakland told, after the State offered him a sweetheart deal and after he confessed to murdering Hilda. Only one problem— which is the issue in this petition: Weakland didn’t kill Hilda. He’s always said he slit her throat with a single cut, no more, but that’s not how she died. Instead, someone strangled her, then slit her throat, then stabbed her, repeatedly and violently, in the neck—a crime of passion, not a clinical contract killing. Weakland’s testimony about the murder doesn’t begin to match up with the physical evidence. Because no rational juror could conclude Weakland killed Hilda, Frank cannot be guilty of a contract killing. Four decades later, we may never know who killed Hilda. But one thing is certain—F rank had nothing to do with it. The issue presented in this petition is the following: Whether the Nevada Supreme Court’s decision rejecting the legal insufficiency claim was unreasonable because, even under a highly deferential review, no rational juror could have concluded Weakland killed Hilda when his description of the manner of death was inconsistent in every way with the physical evidence? i