Allen v. Lawhorn

*1119Justice Scalia, with whom Justice Thomas and Justice Alito join,

dissenting.

Respondent James Lawhorn was sentenced to death by an Alabama court in 1989. Nearly two decades later, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit granted him habeas relief on the ground that his counsel had rendered ineffective assistance at the sentencing hearing by failing to make a closing argument. In my view that decision was patently wrong: The court had no basis in law for setting aside the state courts’ judgment that respondent had failed to establish a probable effect of that failure upon the…