Whether a reviewing court must assess an attorney's performance under the Sixth Amendment's ineffective assistance of counsel standard by objectively comparing counsel's actions to prevailing professional norms at the time of representation

and the need for additional time to prepare a petition that will assist this Court in deciding whether to grant certiorari. 1. This federal habeas case concerns the proper method for assessing attorney performance under the Sixth Amendment. A defendant's constitutional right to effective assistance of counsel is violated if his attorney performs deficiently and that deficient performance prejudices him. Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668 (1984). “Deficient performance” is “an objective standard”; it asks whether an attorney’s performance was “reasonable[] under prevailing professional norms.” Id. at 688 (emphasis added). Even “strategic” choices must be reasonable, Id. at 690-91. Time and again, this Court has identified the “professional norms” of the time, then assessed counsel’s performance against those objective criteria. F.g., Padilla v. Kentucky, 559 U.S. 356, 366-679 (2010); Porter v. McCollum, 558 U.S. 380, 39-40 (2009); Bobby v. Van Hook, 558 U.S. 4, 9-11 (2009) (per curiam); Rompiilla v. Beard, 545 U.S. 374, 387 (2005); Florida v. Nixon, 543 U.S. 175, 191-92 (2004); Wiggins v. Smith, 589 U.S. 510, 522-27 (2003); William v. Taylor, 529 U.S. 362, 395-96 (2000); Roe v. FloresOrtega, 528 U.S. 470, 479 (2000). Thus, a reviewing court’s assessment of “deficient performance” is a two-step shuffle: identify the professional norms in place at the time of representation, then compare counsel’s actions to those norms. No court reviewing Gonzales’s case has adhered to that standard, The Wisconsin Court of Appeals held that counsel cleared the Constitution’s performance bar because she made a “strategic” choice to pursue an all-or-nothing theory from start to finish; to the extent that strategy failed, Gonzales was to blame. See Ex. A at 42. The Wisconsin court never mentioned a professional norm with which counsel’s performance complied. For its part, the Seventh Circuit was “greatly troubled” by counsel’s that “adaptation to the state’s actual case ‘never even crossed her mind,” given that “[a]n attorney’s choice rigidly to pursue a losing strategy certainly can support an ineffective assistance of counsel claim.” Id. at 14. And it recognized that the Wisconsin court had determined that counsel performed adequately because it “thought that there was little [counsel] could have done[] in the face of [the state’s] evidence.” Jd. at 14. Yet, the Seventh Circuit held that the Wisconsin Court of Appeals’s decision was not an unreasonable application of Strickland and, therefore, deferred to its denial of relief. Id. at 15. The ruling in this case contravenes numerous precedents from this Court and rents the fabric of the Sixth Amendment. This Court spoke clearly when it wrote that Strickland’s “deficient performance” test “is necessarily linked to the legal community’s practice and expectations.” Padilla, 559 U.S. at 366. But the Seventh Circuit now holds that a court reviewing a Strickland claim need not assess “deficient performance” in light of “prevailing professional norms.” On that view, Strickland’s objective, two-part test collapses into a subjective gut-check inquiry of whether the defense was doomed to fail. 2. An extension of time is needed to prepare and file a petition for a writ of certiorari because Gonzales’s representation presently is in flux. Federal Defender Havyinss of Wisconsin, Inc. (FDSW), through A