United States Ninth Circuit

A petition for habeas corpus on a penalty-phase ineffective assistance of counsel claim is granted, where: 1) the Arizona post-conviction court unreasonably applied the clearly established federal law of Strickland when it concluded that the defendant's sentencing counsel's performance was not deficient;and 2) the deficient performance prejudiced the defense, since there was a reasonable probability that the sentencing judge would have imposed a sentence less than death had sentencing counsel obtained and presented an expert evaluation of the defendant's neuropsychological functioning.

Appellate Information

• Decided 05/02/2012
• Published 05/02/2012

Judges

• Paez

Court

• United States Ninth Circuit

Counsel

• For Appellant:
  
• Jennifer S. Bedier, Kent E. Cattani