Whether a federal appellate court violates a capital habeas petitioner's rights by refusing to consider additional arguments and authorities in support of a properly-presented federal constitutional claim

QUESTIONS PRESENTED Petitioner was sentenced to death in 1997 after a penalty phase in which his trial counsel’s performance was prejudicially ineffective. The evidence presented in mitigation consisted of one witness, who was asked one substantive question, and that witness’s entire appearance comprised slightly more than three pages of transcript. What’s more, another person—a convicted murderer— —has since confessed to this murder too in a sworn affidavit which Petitioner presented to the state courts. Petitioner has always zealously maintained his innocence and does so to this day. Nonetheless, no state or federal court has allowed Petitioner a hearing to hear from the confessed murderer or even to hear from and about all the other witnesses and evidence that were available and should have been presented in the grossly deficient one-question penalty phase. After the federal district court “reluctantly” denied habeas relief because it did not see prejudice from the deficient penalty-phase performance, and granted a certificate of appealability, the Sixth Circuit swa sponte refused to even consider, and thus did not address, certain of Petitioner’s arguments and authorities presented to that court in further support of trial counsel’s prejudicially ineffective penalty-phase performance. The Sixth Circuit did so on its own, without notice to Petitioner (until the opinion was issued), without any request to do so by the Warden, and when doing so disregarded Petitioner’s clear right to present such additional arguments and authorities in support of his properly-presented federal constitutional claim. Three questions are presented: 1. Does a federal appellate court violate a capital habeas petitioner’s rights to a meaningful appeal and habeas review of a federal constitutional claim, certified for appeal, that the petitioner’s trial counsel had rendered prejudicially ineffective performance, when that court refuses to even consider, as purportedly forfeited and/or waived, additional arguments and authorities in support of the prejudice resulting from trial counsel’s deficient performance, in circumstances where both the party-presentation principle precludes such refusal and this Court’s precedent firmly permits appellate presentation of such additional arguments and authorities in i support of a properly-presented federal constitutional claim? 2. Is trial counsel prejudicially ineffective in the penalty phase of a capital case, in violation of the capital defendant’s rights under the Fifth, Sixth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments, by presenting only one witness (Petitioner’s father) and asking only one substantive question, when there was much more compelling mitigation evidence to present, including expert testimony about Petitioner’s mental health, testimony from Petitioner’s mother and sister and the mothers of his children, testimony about his employment and his good behavior in jail, and testimony and argument about the “strong provocation” entailed by the victim’s disloyal acts of snitching against her own friends and lovers including Petitioner to help send them to prison in order to spare herself that same fate? 3. Does it violate the Eighth and/or Fourteenth Amendments and the right to due process, and unreasonably apply federal law and/or unreasonably determine the facts, when both state and federal courts refuse to conduct an evidentiary hearing concerning an affidavit presented in state court in which a convicted murderer confessed to committing the murder for which Petitioner is sentenced to death, and the evidence in support of Petitioner’s guilt is weak and consists primarily of “snitch” testimony and testimony of other biased witnesses, and thereby entitling Petitioner to a hearing in federal court on his claim under Brady v. Maryland? ii