Jarame Nelson, aka Tarence Nelson v. Johnny Fitz, Warden

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.

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.

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.