Whether McCoy v. Louisiana prohibits only explicit admissions of guilt or also bars functional concessions that override a defendant's objective of maintaining innocence

| In McCoy v. Louisiana, 138 S, Ct. 1500 (2018), this Court held that the Sixth , Amendment guarantees a criminal defendant the personal right to decide the objective of his defense and forbids defense counsel from conceding guilt over the defendant’s express insistence on innocence. In 2000, Roman Flores was convicted of capital murder in Harris County under Texas’s Law of Parties, which permits a defendant to be found guilty of capital murder based on participation in a predicate offense. Flores testified at trial that he was innocent of any robbery or murder and expressly and repeatedly insisted on maintaining that innocence. Nevertheless, trial counsel told the jury that it could convict Flores of aggravated robbery — a lesser included offense and the predicate offense that, as a matter of Texas law, establishes capital murder liability under the Law of Parties — if it believed the testimony of one State witness. The questions presented are: 1. Whether McCoy v. Louisiana prohibits only explicit admissions of guilt, or also bars functional concessions — such as conceding elements, conditional authorizations to convict, or conceding predicate offenses that establish guilt under accomplice or law-of-parties theories — when those concessions override the defendant’s objective of maintaining innocence. 2. Whether the Sixth Amendment autonomy right recognized in McCoy v. Louisiana is violated when defense counsel, over the defendant’s express insistence on innocence, authorizes the jury to convict the defendant of a lesser| | a ee included offense that functions as the predicate offense for capital or felony murder under an theory. ii c..