Kirstie Wade v. Pottawattamie County

Oral argument

• Argued

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Source: CourtListener oral-argument corpus (CC0).

How courts have described this case

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

• applying de novo review under AEDPA to an issue that the state court \never reached\
• describing medical experts as unable to find mitigating evidence because they were not provided adequate school, medical, and prison records
• finding prejudice in light of the evidence of abuse, poverty, alcoholism, brain damage, and mental impairments counsel unreasonably failed to uncover
• “[R]easonably diligent counsel may draw a line when they have good reason to think further investigation would be a waste.”
• failure to obtain the prior conviction file when the state’s case relied heavily on it and that file would have revealed a plethora of unknown mitigation evidence
• “[W]e long have referred [to ABA standards] as guides to determine what is reasonable”

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).