Whether a defendant-appellant has a right to counsel through the filing of a petition for a writ of certiorari

QUESTIONS PRESENTED When a state by statute or rule imposes a duty upon appellate counsel for the defendant-appellant in a criminal case to file a petition for a writ of certiorari with the state’s highest appellate court after an adverse decision by a lower appellate court, does the defendant-appellant have a right to counsel through the point of the filing of a petition for a writ of certiorari in the appellate process? Whether a state court procedure about which state trial courts were apparently unsure and which appears to have been addressed only once in a published appellate opinion in a non-capital case not involving a state mandate that appellant counsel file a petition for a writ of certiorari after an adverse decision of a lower appellate court in a death penalty case was not firmly established and regularly followed and whether the argument of the issue asserted to be barred was fairly presented in state court albeit not by utilizing a designated rule of procedure the designation of which was not firmly established and regularly followed but by otherwise presenting through and to the state’s highest court? i