Whether a court must consider only trial evidence when determining the prejudicial effect of a constitutional error or if post-verdict evidence can be used in assessing prejudice

Petitioner established below, and the Eleventh Circuit agreed, that petitioner’s capital murder trial was tainted by a Giglio violation . Ordinarily, a petitioner who makes such an extraordinary showing of prosecutorial misconduct would be entitled to habeas relief under 28 U.S.C. § 2254. But the Eleventh Circuit deemed the violation immaterial . The Eleventh Circuit held that the Florida Supreme Court reasonably concluded that, even without the Giglio -tainted testimony, the evidence against petitioner was “overwhelming.” The Eleventh Circuit reached that determination almost entirely on the basis of evidence that Florida developed a decade after petitioner’s trial and that flatly contradicted unrebutted evidence presented by the defense at the actual trial. The decision below opens a direct circuit split with the Second, Sixth , and Tenth Circuit s, United States v. Jean Baptiste , 166 F.3d 102 (2d Cir. 1999) ; Apanovitch v. Bobby , 648 F.3d 434 (6th Cir. 2011) ; Browning v. Trammell , 717 F.3d 1092 (10th Cir. 2013), and the North Carolina Supreme Court , State v. Best, 376 N.C. 340, 852 S.E.2d 191 (2020), on a question of exceptional importance. It is also in deep tension with this Court’s recent decision in Glossip v. Oklahoma, 604 U.S. 226 (2025) . The questions presented are: 1. Whether in determining whether a constitutional error had a prejudicial effect on the outcome of a trial a court must consider only that evidence that was presented to the jury at the trial . 2. Whether the prejudice from the Giglio violation in this case met the standards for relief under Giglio and Brecht . (ii)