Erik Hentzen v. United States

Can Strickland v. Washington’s “prejudice prong,” be satisfied by a showing that constitutionally inadequate representation at the trial-court level “actually had an adverse effect on the defense” because it materially impaired the defendant’s prospects of obtaining relief from an error on appeal? More specifically, where Petitioner’s direct appeal from a judgment imposing a twenty-year prison sentence for child-pornography offenses resulted in a determination that the district court had erroneously permitted the Government to admit a prejudicial “grooming video,” but that the error was harmless in light of what the reviewing court believed to be overwhelming evidence of the Petitioner’s guilt, did Petitioner independently satisfy Strickland by sufficiently demonstrating that, if his trial counsel had been adequately prepared to expose the objectively false digital-computer-forensics evidence with which the Government inundated the jury, the evidentiary record in connection with which the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals assessed the trial court’s evidentiaryadmission error would have been fundamentally different to a degree that “undermine[s] confidence” that the circuit court would have found that error harmless?