Whether a state court violates the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act by applying a legal standard different from that required by the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments in evaluating whether a confession was coerced through undercover police techniques involving threats of violence, and whether appellate courts may decline to address a habeas petitioner's primary claim regarding the involuntariness of incriminating statements

No question identified. : standard that is different from the one applied under the U.S. Constitution, and (b) whether courts may decline to address one of the primary grounds for relief asserted by a habeas petitioner. As to the first issue, the Ninth Circuit held that, regardless of whether the Washington trial court applied the wrong legal standard in adjudicating petitioner’s claim, the Washington Court of Appeals did not violate AEDPA by reviewing that decision under a deferential standard of review. As to the second issue, although the state trial court rejected petitioner’s claim that the police techniques used in this case rendered his incriminating statements inadmissible as a matter of law, neither the state court of appeals nor the Ninth Circuit addressed the claim. Respondent is the warden of the Washington state prison where petitioner is serving three life sentences without the possibility of parole. This case arises from petitioner Atif Rafay’s conviction in Washington state court of a triple homicide, based on incriminating statements he and his co-defendant Sebastian Burns made to undercover Canadian police officers who were posing as threatening gangsters. Nearly all the testimonial and forensic evidence pointed away from Atif or Sebastian as the killers. See Brief of Amicus Curiae Washington Innocence Project in Support of Petitioner, Doc. 76, at 17-22. The real killers were very likely the “unidentified males” whose blood was mixed with the victim’s blood and whose hair was found at the crime scene—blood and hair that did not match the DNA profile of any victim nor Atif or Sebastian. Ibid.; see C.A. E.R. 1285-86; 1651-52; 1658-59; 1664-65; 1668-77. Using an undercover investigative technique called “Mr. Big,” the Royal Canadian Mounted Police created a fake underground criminal organization with deep reach and a penchant for murdering those they believed would betray them. C.A. E.R. 1723-28; 1746-52; see Amicus Brief of the Criminal Lawyers’ Association of Ontario, Canada in Support of Atif Ahmad Rafay, Doc. 29-2. The entire point of the operation was to intimidate the teens into making incriminating statements. The technique has never been acceptable in the United States, and Canada’s Supreme Court has since found that any confessions elicited using these techniques are “presumptively inadmissible” due to the extreme risk of coercion. See Amicus Brief of the Criminal Lawyers’ Association, Doc. 29-2, at 1 (quoting R. v. Hart, [2014] 2 S.C.R. 544 (Can.)). Without the statements extracted through the foreign operation, no reasonable jury could have convicted Atif or Sebastian of killing Atif’s family when they were teenagers. The Mr. Big operation in this case involved twelve “scenarios,” which were planned interactions between the targets (Atif and Sebastian) and undercover Canadian officers. App. C, at 11. The elaborate scheme coerced Sebastian and later Atif into involuntarily “confessing” by convincing the teens that Mr. Big believed they were facing imminent arrest, that he believed the only way he could protect himself from being turned in by the teens in exchange for leniency was for the teens to confess to him immediately so he could help them, and that if they refused to confess he would have them killed in order to protect himself from the teens turning him in. After entwining Sebastian into their fake organization and then springing the trap, Sebastian eventually made contradictory and even internally inconsistent incriminating statements to avoid the perception that he would turn on Mr. Big. See App. C, at 12-13. Once Sebastian had falsely implicated both teens in the murders, Atif had even less of a choice. At that point, the only way for Atif to avoid the perception that he was a risk to Mr. Big was to falsely implicate himself as well. See App. C, at 13. Atif challenged the admissibility of his statements, arguing that the statements were coerced in violation of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amen