Whether the Missouri Supreme Court's application of Strickland violated the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments

QUESTION PRESENTED The Missouri Supreme Court denied all of Petitioner’s claims of ineffective assistance of counsel on post-conviction appeal, utilizing a skewed construction of the well-established Strickland standard. Rather than following Strickland and its progeny, the Missouri Supreme Court employed an outdated approach to Strickland ’s performance and prejudice prongs to deny relief in direct contradiction of this Court’s precedent in Rompilla, Wiggins, Williams, Lockett, Eddings, and Tennard v. Dretke. Because of this tortured application, these questions are presented: 1. Whether the Missouri Supreme Court’s total deference to counsel’s “deliberate decisions” without considering their actual reasonableness amounts to an irrebuttable presumption of effectiveness, violating Strickland, and the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments? 2. Whether the Missouri Supreme Court’s application of a prejudice assessment that ignores the “one juror” test, never considers the totality of the evidence, and imposes a nexus requirement between the new mitigating evidence and the crime, violates Strickland, and the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments? i PROCEEDINGS DIRECTLY RELATED TO THIS CASE State v. McFadden, Cause No. 03CR-05 (Circuit Court of the County of St. Louis, Missouri) State v. McFadden, 191 S.W.3d 648 (Mo. banc 2006) (direct appeal) State v. McFadden, 369 S.W.3d 727 (Mo. banc 2012), cert denied, 568 U.S. 999 (2012) (second direct appeal) McFadden v. State, Cause No. 12SL-CC04879 (Circuit Court of the County of St. Louis, Missouri) (post-conviction trial proceeding) McFadden vy. State, 2020 WL 1861425 (Mo. Apr. 14, 2020), reh'g denied (June 30, 2020) (postconviction appeal) ii