Is capital appellate counsel ineffective under the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments when they do not raise that both the trial court and trial defense counsel failed to address the issue of race with prospective jurors when the three victims were white, the three co-defendants were Black, the county from which the prospective jurors were drawn was ninety percent white, and three prospective jurors in voir dire made racist statements?

QUESTION PRESENTED This Court recently cautioned trial courts to be especially vigilant against “particularly noxious strain[s] of racial prejudice,” Buck v. Davis, 137 S.Ct. 759, 776, (2017), and further observed that racism “remains a familiar and recurring evil.” Pena-Rodriguez v. Colorado, 137 S.Ct. 855, 862, 868 (2017); see also Tharpe v. Sellers, 138 S.Ct. 545, 546 (2018). D’Amantae Graham’s capital case had red flags from the start that all participants must be vigilant against racism. Yet, the trial court denied defense counsel’s request to include race-related questions on the juror questionnaire and defense counsel failed to voir dire about race even after three instances of racism occurred during jury selection. This case presents this Court with the opportunity to address the procedures that trial courts should employ, albeit through the lens of appellate ineffectiveness of counsel, to be vigilant against racism: Is capital appellate counsel ineffective under the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments when they do not raise that both the trial court and trial defense counsel failed to address the issue of race with prospective jurors when the three victims were white, the three co-defendants were Black, the county from which the prospective jurors were drawn was ninety percent white, and three prospective jurors in voir dire made racist statements? i