Conflicts of defense lawyers

1. Whether the presumed prejudice standard of Cuyler v. Sullivan, 446 U.S. 335 (1980), applies when a defense attorney labors under an actual conflict of interest created by his own criminal conduct — specifically, by personally retrieving and concealing the alleged murder weapon to avoid his own prosecution for evidence tampering — in a question that has deeply divided the Circuits. 2. Whether a state ’ s self-defense jury instruction violates the Fourteenth Amendment ’ s Due Process Clause when it effectively negates the right to self defense and shifts the burden of proof to the defendant, based solely on the defendant ’ s legal status as a felon in possession of a firearm, without requiring any causal link between that status and the imminent threat faced. 3. Whether a federal court of appeals renders a decision based on an “unreasonable determination of the facts ” under 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(2) when it denies a Certificate of Appealability by concluding a petitioner cannot show prejudice because critical corroborating evidence was never found, when the state-court record unequivocally documents that the evidence was, in fact, recovered from state custody.