When a state provides a mandatory procedure for fact-finding in post-conviction death penalty cases where a constitutional violation is pleaded, does the state court's refusal to engage in the state's mandatory fact-finding procedures deny the applicant due process of law in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment?

QUESTION PRESENTED At Amos Wells’s trial, his counsel presented racist, eugenic pseudo-science to argue that he was more dangerous because he carried the “warrior gene,” thereby ensuring he be found a future danger and sentenced to death. Yet Texas courts prohibited Mr. Wells from presenting any evidence to prove his Sixth Amendment postconviction claim. As this Court has long held, “when a State opts to act in a field where its action has significant discretionary elements, it must nonetheless act in accord with the dictates of the Constitution-and, in particular, in accord with the Due Process Clause.” Evitts v. Lucey, 469 U.S. 387, 401 (1985). In Texas, when death-sentenced persons allege facts that, if true, raise a constitutional violation that would result in anew trial, and the State disputes those facts, the state court must conduct postconviction fact-finding to resolve the disputed allegations. Mr. Wells easily met that low threshold to receive the benefit of Texas’s post-conviction procedures. This case presents the following important question: When a state provides a mandatory procedure for fact-finding in post-conviction death penalty cases where a constitutional violation is pleaded, does the state court’s refusal to engage in the state’s mandatory fact-finding procedures deny the applicant due process of law in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment? i