Did the Seventh Circuit err under Miller-El v. Cockrell and Buck v. Davis when it determined Petitioner had not made a substantial showing of a denial of a constitutional right and denied a certificate of appealability

QUESTIONS PRESENTED I. Did the Seventh Circuit err under Miller-El v. Cockrell, 537 U.S. 322, 336-38 (2003) and Buck v. Davis, 137 S. Ct. 759, 773-74 (2017), when it determined Petitioner had not made a “substantial showing of a denial of a constitutional right” and denied a certificate of appealability after the district court—and the Indiana state courts, before it—applied to Petitioner’s sentencing claim a standard higher than that constitutionally required by Townsend v. Burke, 334 U.S. 736 (1948) and United States v. Tucker, 404 U.S. 443 (1972)? II. Similarly, did the Seventh Circuit err when it failed to issue a certificate of appealability with respect to Petitioner’s Sixth Amendment claim that his lawyer had been ineffective for failing to investigate the circumstances of Petitioner’s arrest for another crime—an arrest that was later expunged, because a state court necessarily found Petitioner had nothing to do with whatever lead to that arrest, but was used nonetheless as the principal aggravating factor justifying Petitioner’s effective life sentence of 90 years. i II. Should a certificate of appealability issue as a matter of course when a district court relies on incorrect standards to analyze a claim, because its resolution of the claim will then always be debatable; to conclude otherwise, a circuit court of appeals would either have to apply the wrong standards, itself, or it would have to address the claim on its merits, which 28 U.S.C. § 2253(c) “forbids”? Miller-El v. Cockrell, 537 U.S. 322, 336-87 (20038); accord Buck v. Davis, 137 8. Ct. 759, 773 (2017))? ii