Whether a federal court applying AEDPA deference to a reasoned state court opinion may ignore the explanation provided by the state court and instead apply Richter's 'could have supported' standard

QUESTIONS PRESENTED In Wilson v. Sellers, 584 U.S. 122, 125 (2018), this Court made clear that where the state court provides reasons for its decision, AEDPA deference is a “straightforward inquiry” requiring a federal court to “simply review[] the specific reasons given by the state court and defer[] to those reasons if they are reasonable.” Wilson clarified the limited scope of Harrington v. Richter, 562 U.S. 86 (2011), which provided that “[w]here a state court’s decision is unaccompanied by an explanation” a federal habeas court may “determine what arguments or theories... could have supported” the unreasoned decision. Jd. at 102 (emphasis added). In this case, the Arkansas Supreme Court found petitioner Thomas Springs’ trial counsel deficient for failing to present readily available testimony from his son, Matthew, at the penalty phase of his capital trial but articulated four reasons why Mr. Springs could not demonstrate prejudice under Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668 (1984). After finding those four reasons to be unsupported and unreasonable, the federal district court nonetheless affirmed. The Eighth Circuit likewise affirmed, finding the state court’s ultimate conclusion reasonable without examining the four actual reasons supplied by the state court. One of the four reasons cited by the Arkansas Supreme Court, and the only reason actually mentioned by the Eighth Circuit to uphold the no-prejudice finding, was that Matthew’s testimony “could have” resulted in damaging impeachment evidence. However, neither the Arkansas Supreme Court nor the opinion below suggested that such impeachment would have occurred. The record in this case shows that the prosecution would not have actually tried to impeach Matthew. i The questions presented by this case are: (1) Whether a federal court applying AEDPA deference to a reasoned state court opinion may ignore the explanation provided by the state court and instead apply Richter’s “could have supported” standard. (2) Whether this Court’s clearly established law allows a state court, in assessing Strickland prejudice, to weigh hypothetical impeachment evidence if the record shows that no such evidence would actually be put to the jury. ii