James David Carter v. Ricky Bell, Warden Paul Summers, Attorney General

How courts have described this case

Verbatim parenthetical descriptions written by other courts when citing this decision. Ranked by citation-network relevance.

• concluding that defense counsel’s failure to investigate the defendant’s family, social, or psychological background “constituted representation at a level below an objective standard of reasonableness”
• concluding that defense counsel’s failure to investigate the defendant’s “family, social or psychological background . . . constituted representation at a level below an objective standard of reasonableness”
• holding there was no Brady violation where the defendant should have known of the information and it was available from another source
• finding that the petitioner was prejudiced by counsel's failure to investigate and present mitigating evidence at sentencing
• holding that “the complete failure to investigate, let alone present, existing mitigating evidence is below an objective standard of reasonable representation, and may in fact be so severe as to permit us to infer prejudice”
• noting that this court “g[ives] deference” to state court determinations of the possible admissibility of rebuttal evidence in these situations

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).