Whether the failure to investigate and present mitigating evidence of intellectual disability based on the Flynn Effect violates the Sixth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments

QUESTIONS PRESENTED 1. Whether it violates the Sixth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments for a state to defeat a post-conviction claim of ineffective assistance of counsel in a capital case by ruling, after the trial, that mitigating evidence of intellectual disability based on the Flynn Effect is “not a relevant consideration in the mental retardation determination,” so counsel’s failure to investigate and develop such mitigating evidence to correct inflated IQ scores of 76 and 79 to below the state threshold for “mental retardation” is categorically not ineffective assistance of counsel. 2. Whether it violates the Eighth Amendment for a capital trial court to refuse to allow the defendant to proffer as relevant mitigating evidence, during the sentencing phase of the trial, the life sentence imposed on the defendant’s brother, a co-defendant convicted earlier for the same murders.