“[T]he Court must determine whether the state court’s application of Strickland was unreasonable, not whether defense counsel’s performance fell below the Strickland standard.”
How later courts described this case
- “[T]he Court must determine whether the state court’s application of Strickland was unreasonable, not whether defense counsel’s performance fell below the Strickland standard.”
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
MERRITT, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
I concur in the court’s opinion because Article III judges have so little room left for judgment now under the AEDPA standard which a unanimous Supreme Court has recently described as allowing habeas only “as a guard against extreme malfunctions in the state criminal justice systems and not as a means of error correction.” Greene v. Fisher, — U.S. -, 132 S.Ct. 38, 43 , 181 L.Ed.2d 336 (2011) (internal quotation marks omitted). Thus, the fact that the petitioner did not receive effective counsel must also rise to the level of an “extreme malfunction” of the system of criminal justice. I assume that this now means not only a constitutional error but also an unconscionable result. The case does not rise to that level.