Whether the Ninth Circuit's methodology for denying a COA is out of step with Supreme Court directive

QUESTIONS PRESENTED FOR REVIEW Petitioner entered a plea agreement in which the government agreed to recommend a sentence of no more than 35-years and, after a sentencing proceeding in which—without objection—the government characterized her conduct as the “worst of the worst” of murders within the district, the District Court imposed life. After the Ninth Circuit refused to find plain error at sentencing on appeal, petitioner brought a proceeding under 28 U.S.C. § 2255 alleging several claims of ineffective assistance. The District Court denied relief and declined to issue a certificate of appealability (COA). Thereafter, the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit summarily declined to issue a COA. This case presents a question of fundamental importance: is the Ninth Circuit’s methodology for denying a COA fundamentally out of step with this Court’s directive that a certificate of appealability under 28 U.S.C. § 2253 should be granted when reasonable jurists could debate whether the habeas petition should have been resolved in a different manner or whether the issues presented were adequate to deserve encouragement to proceed further. Specifically, did the Ninth Circuit place in improper burden on petitioner when it denied a COA, when the issues presented to the Court of Appeals were as follows: il 1. Whether the District Court erred in rejecting petitioner’s claim that her attorney provided ineffective assistance of counsel by failing to object to the government’s breach of the plea agreement at sentencing on the basis that the government had not breached the agreement, when, on direct appeal, the Ninth Circuit had found the government’s statements sufficiently pejorative to warrant an assumption that a breach had occurred, thus, demonstrating that reasonable jurists could reach a different conclusion. 2. Whether the District Court erred in rejecting petitioner’s claims that her attorney provided ineffective assistance of counsel in the manner that counsel handled the unwarranted sentencing disparity factor, including counsel’s failure to provide the sentencing court with sufficient information about comparative homicide cases brought within the district and nationally, which would have demonstrated that a sentence of life imprisonment in the circumstances of this case was unwarranted and extraordinary. 3. Whether the District Court erred in denying an evidentiary hearing and rejecting petitioner’s claim that her attorney provided ineffective assistance of counsel by failing to negotiate a iii more favorable plea agreement that would have guarded against the risk of a sentence of life imprisonment, when the court accepted as true the government’s unsworn and untested assertion that, had counsel requested a plea pursuant to Fed. R. Crim. Pro. 11(c)(1)(C) and a better appellate waiver clause, the result would have been less favorable to petitioner, and when petitioner presented evidence from homicide cases within the district that contradicted the government’s assertion. 4. Whether the District Court erred in rejecting petitioner’s claim of ineffective assistance of counsel with respect to counsel’s performance in plea negotiations by reasoning, in part, that defendants are not entitled to receive a plea offer from the government, when in this case, petitioner had received a plea offer from the government and her claim was that her counsel should have negotiated for a plea agreement consistent with agreements in previous homicide cases brought in the district that would have better guarded against the risk of a sentence of life imprisonment.