1. Whether an indictment charging conspiracy to distribute a controlled substance under 21 USCS 846 and 841(a) fails to state an offense where it places the adverb "knowingly" in the future-tense which grammatically did not allege that the defendant was aware of the nature of the substance.

2. Whether trial and appellate counsel were constitutionally ineffective under Strickland v. Washington, 466 US 668 (1984) for failing to object to this defective indictment, the missing mens rea instruction, and denial of due process, and whether the lower courts misapplied Slack v. McDaniel, 529 US 473 (2000) by refusing a Certificate of Appealability on this debatable constitutional question.

3. Whether courts may uphold indictments that grammatically misplace the mens rea term, omitting the controlled-substance knowledge element, on the rationale that the indictment "tracked the statute," contrary to Russell v. United States, 369 US 749 (1962) and United States v. Resendiz-Ponce, 549 US 102 (2007).

Whether an indictment charging conspiracy to distribute a controlled substance fails to state an offense due to grammatical placement of the adverb 'knowingly'