Pearson v. Winston

Issue: (1) Whether the Fourth Circuit created an impermissible end-run around Harrington v. Richter, Cullen v. Pinholster, and the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act by holding that a state court’s merits determination is not an “adjudication on the merits” whenever the state prisoner later presents the federal court with new material evidence and the state court decided the ineffective assistance claim without an evidentiary hearing and (2) whether the Fourth Circuit wrongly ignored 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d) and Strickland v. Washington in concluding as a de novo matter, and contrary to the Virginia Supreme Court and Strickland, that trial counsel were ineffective for deciding not to argue mental retardation at sentencing?