Dephne Nguyen Wright v. Bobby Lumpkin, Director, Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Correctional Institutions Division, et al.
FourthAmendment HabeasCorpus CriminalProcedure
Whether the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and district court applied too demanding of a standard governing issuance of a certificate of appealability (COA) to petitioner's substantial claim of ineffective assistance of appellate counsel
QUESTIONS PRESENTED L Whether the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and district court applied too demanding of a standard governing issuance of a certificate of appealability (COA) to petitioner’s substantial claim of ineffective assistance of appellate counsel, which turns on a substantial Fourth Amendment claim omitted from the brief filed on petitioner’s direct appeal. Il. Whether this Court should grant certiorari in order to provide guidance to, and resolve the division among, the lower federal courts concerning the proper application of the COA standard. Ill. Whether police officers’ execution of a search warrant at petitioner’s home in 2017 was invalid under the Fourth Amendment because the warrant application contained no information supporting an officer’s belief that petitioner’s business records created in 2012 (later offered at petitioner’s trial and also considered by the state appellate court to find sufficient evidence of petitioner’s conviction) would be inside her home in 2017. ii IV. Whether petitioner’s direct appeal counsel deprived her of the effective assistance of counsel by failing to raise the Fourth Amendment “staleness” claim, which was. preserved at _ petitioner’s trial, particularly in view of (1) the Texas courts’ refusal, as a matter of Texas law, to apply this Court’s goodfaith exception to the Fourth Amendment exclusionary rule to claims that a search warrant was not supported by probable cause and (2) the fact that the Fourth Amendment violation clearly was not harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.