Pinholster v. Ayers

Chief Judge KOZINSKI,

with whom

Judges RYMER and KLEINFELD join, dissenting:

The California Supreme Court twice considered Pinholster’s claim that his death sentence be set aside because his lawyers performed ineffectively, and twice rejected that claim on the merits. Under *685AEDPA, those determinations come to us encased in a double layer of deference: first, the substantial deference to which lawyers are entitled under Strickland in making judgments during the course of their representation; and, second, the deference to which the state court is entitled in determining whether the lawyers’…