Whether the pre-AEDPA presumption of correctness applies whenever the state record supports the state court's finding, or whether the federal court must consider each statutory exception

QUESTIONS PRESENTED Congress modified 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d) when it passed the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (““AEDPA”), and AEDPA substantially changed how federal courts determine facts in habeas cases. Because the federal district court took no action on his habeas petition for over a quarter century, Arturo Aranda has been on death row for forty-four years, and the pre-AEDPA version of § 2254(d) controls his case. That version of § 2254(d) identified eight scenarios in which no presumption of correctness attached to a state finding of fact. Townsend v. Sain, 372 U.S. 293 (1963), made fact development mandatory in six of them. Before the Supreme Court decided Jefferson v. Upton, 560 U.S. 284 (2010), there was a circuit split as to the operation of the pre-AEDPA presumption of correctness. Some circuits (including the Fifth) held that a presumption attached whenever the state record fairly supported a state-court finding. Other circuits hewed to a more textualist reading under which any of eight statutorily specified conditions could disable the correctness presumption—whether the state record fairly supported the state-court finding or not. In Jefferson, this Court endorsed the textualist reading of the provision, siding against circuits that attached a presumption whenever the state record supported state-court findings. Among other things, the Fifth Circuit revived that pre-Jefferson split when it summarily determined that Aranda’s Miranda waiver was knowing and intelligent. This Certiorari Petition presents the following two questions: 1. On findings of fact, does a federal court (applying the pre-AEDPA statute) presume a finding’s correctness whenever the state-court record supports the finding, as the Fifth Circuit continues to hold, or does a federal court consider each salient statutory exception, as all other circuits have done since Jefferson? 2. Does the Fifth Circuit’s test for mandatory factfinding, which makes no reference to the sufficiency of state process, violate Townsend?