Whether a capital defendant's Sixth Amendment right to the effective assistance of counsel is violated where, but for counsel's intervention and unfounded assurances, the defendant would have accepted a plea and avoided the death penalty

QUESTIONS PRESENTED As this Court has stated repeatedly through the years, the effective assistance of counsel is paramount in capital cases. That is why States, including Ohio, require additional experiential and educational requirements before counsel are permitted to represent a client in a capital trial. Here, Petitioner Short’s trial counsel had neither the experience nor education, and it showed. Trial counsel twice convinced their client to forgo what would have resulted in sparing his life. First, trial counsel advised their capital client to forego a plea deal that would have saved his life; counsel then directed their client to waive the presentation of mitigation, despite first failing to complete a mitigation investigation. The result is that Short is now on sitting on Ohio’s death row. Petitioner Short’s case raises a critical concern of national importance: whether and to what extent capital trial counsel can forgo following best practices and counsel their client against their client’s best interest. Accordingly, Short presents the following two questions to this Court: 1. Is a capital defendant’s Sixth Amendment right to the effective assistance of counsel violated where, but for counsel’s intervention and unfounded assurances, defendant would have accepted a plea and avoided the death penalty? 2. Is a capital defendant’s Sixth Amendment right to effective counsel violated when his counsel advised him, after virtually no investigation into either his background or the applicable law, to waive his right to present mitigating evidence to the jury? i