Michael T. Washington v. Delaware

Whether a state court violates the Supremacy Clause and Due Process when it disregards a federal district court’s stay-and-remand order, requiring merits review of postconviction claims, and instead dismisses those claims as procedurally barred;

Whether structural error occurs when a state court permits conflicted postconviction counsel to represent a defendant, where counsel admits withholding the case file, investigative materials, and exculpatory evidence from the defendant;

Whether a state court violates Due Process when it re-characterizes filings such as a made pursuant to Rule 60(b) and a Request for Administrative Hearing as successive postconviction motions in order to dismiss them without merits review;

Whether a state court may deny a Motion for New Trial, made pursuant to Rule 33, solely on timing grounds without considering newly discovered evidence demonstrating actual innocence;

Whether a state court violates Due Process by refusing to allow a defendant to file a memorandum and appendix supporting postconviction claims, and then dismissing the filing as procedurally barred;

Whether a state court violates federal law by applying the wrong federal precedent to a motion for correction of illegal sentence, made pursuant to Rule 35(a), involving a new substantive retroactive rule announced by the United States Supreme Court and the Third Circuit; and

Whether repeated summary dismissals of postconviction filings - without individualized analysis - violates the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of meaningful judicial review.