Does the petitioner's Due Process right to an adequate and effective appeal in a capital case require a new trial where critical portions of the proceedings, including voir dire of potential jurors, are missing and cannot be reconstructed?

QUESTIONS PRESENTED In Griffin v. Illinois, 351 U.S. 12 (1956), this Court held that the State must provide a record of trial sufficient to ensure an “adequate and effective” appeal. Id. at 20. Any alternative to a complete transcript must “place before the appellate court an equivalent report of the events at trial from which the appellant’s contentions arise.” Draper v. Washington, 372 U.S. 487, 495 (1963); see also Parker v. Dugger, 498 U.S. 308, 321 (1991). Furthermore, “where the grounds of appeal . .. make out a colorable need for a complete transcript, the burden is on the State to show that only a portion of the transcript or an ‘alternative’ will suffice for an effective appeal on those grounds.” Mayer v. Chicago, 404 U.S. 189, 195 (1971). In Mr. Menzies’s capital murder case, key portions of the trial were not recorded, and the record was then fabricated after the fact. The parts of the trial the State failed to record included portions of voir dire and the time surrounding an incident in which a juror fainted and Mr. Menzies was forcibly shackled in front of the jurors. The court reporter tasked with taking shorthand notes of the trial failed to record all of the proceedings. A note reader, who was never in the court room during trial, then fabricated testimony, including answers to voir dire questions from prospective jurors, and included it in the transcript. Myriad other errors were also discovered in the transcript including the court reporter consistently mixing up numbers and names, and the note reader adding information from police reports as witness testimony. The court below found that the state court’s disposition of this issue was not an unreasonable application of this Court’s precedent. The court concluded that it was not unreasonable for the state court to require Mr. Menzies to establish prejudice for the errors in the transcript, and that Mr. Menzies had failed to do so. This case presents the following questions: 1. Does the petitioner’s Due Process right to an adequate and effective appeal in a capital case require a new trial where critical portions of the proceedings, including voir dire of potential jurors, are missing and cannot be reconstructed? 2. Where some or all of a transcript is unavailable and cannot be reconstructed, is a petitioner required to show that he was prejudiced as to his ability to raise a particular claim? i