[PUBLISH]

IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE ELEVENTH CIRCUIT

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No. 19-11466

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D.C. Docket No. 5:10-cv-00017-LGW

JAMES ALLYSON LEE,

 Petitioner-Appellant,

versus

GDCP WARDEN, 

 Respondent-Appellee.

________________________

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Southern District of Georgia

________________________

(February 11, 2021)

Before NEWSOM, GRANT, and ED CARNES, Circuit Judges.

GRANT, Circuit Judge:

James Allyson Lee, a Georgia prisoner sentenced to death for the murder of 

Sharon Chancey, appeals the district court’s denial of his federal habeas corpus

petition, filed pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2254. Lee contends that his attorneys

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violated his Sixth Amendment right to effective assistance of counsel by failing to 

adequately investigate and present mitigating evidence in the sentencing phase of 

his capital murder trial. The Georgia Supreme Court rejected Lee’s ineffectiveassistance claim in state postconviction proceedings on the ground that he failed to 

show that the allegedly deficient performance prejudiced him, as required under 

Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668 (1984). The district court found that the 

Georgia Supreme Court’s decision was not an unreasonable application of federal 

law and denied Lee’s § 2254 petition. After careful consideration, and with the 

benefit of oral argument, we affirm.

I.

A.

One night in May 1994, after stealing several handguns from a gun shop and 

driving around for a while with his friend Shannon Yeoman, James Lee decided to 

steal his father’s prized pickup truck, a 1992 Chevrolet Silverado. Lee later told 

the police that he wanted to kill his father—and probably would have if things had 

gone as planned—because his father had abused and abandoned Lee and his 

mother when Lee was a child. The plan was for Yeoman to lure Lee’s father out to 

a nearby highway by telling him that Lee needed help with a broken-down car. 

Putting the plan in motion, Lee dropped off Yeoman near the trailer park where his 

father lived and drove Yeoman’s Toyota to the meeting place to wait. 

Right away, Lee’s plan hit a snag: his father was out of town. The father’s 

live-in girlfriend, Sharon Chancey, was home alone, but refused when Yeoman 

asked her to drive the truck to help Lee. Lee, meanwhile, had really been “hoping

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it would be [his] dad”; he had worked himself up thinking about the things that his 

father “had done to [Lee] when [he] was small and the things that he had done to 

[Lee’s] mother, and the life that she chose from those things.” When Yeoman 

reported that only Chancey was home, Lee “still had those emotions and those 

feelings going,” and he thought, “You’ll do.” 

He sent Yeoman back to try again, telling her to insist that Chancey come 

out to help him with the supposedly broken-down old Toyota. When Chancey still

refused, Lee went into the trailer himself to persuade her. Lee later said that 

Chancey was reluctant because Lee’s father didn’t like her driving his truck, but 

she eventually agreed to help. At trial, the parties disputed whether Chancey left 

the trailer voluntarily—she was wearing only a nightshirt and panties, had no shoes

on, and had left her dentures at home, which was apparently something she never 

did. 

One way or another, at about 4:00 in the morning, Chancey and Yeoman 

drove in the prized Silverado truck to Highway 84 near Blackshear, Georgia, 

where Lee had set his trap. After arriving, Chancey got out of the truck and 

walked over to the Toyota, and Lee used one of his stolen guns to shoot her in the 

face.1

 

Lee picked up Chancey’s apparently lifeless body and threw her in the back 

of the Silverado. After stopping for gas—with Chancey still half-naked and 

bleeding in the truck bed—Lee drove approximately 50 miles to a remote area. He 

1 Lee consistently maintained that he walked up behind Chancey and shot her in the back of the 

head as she bent over to look into the Toyota. But the medical examiner testified that Chancey 

had been shot in the face, not in the back of the head.

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dragged Chancey out of the back of the truck, pulling off her nightshirt in the 

process, and dumped her in the woods wearing only her panties. Before leaving, 

Lee began to pull Chancey’s rings off her fingers, and she grabbed his hand. Lee 

took out his gun and fired three more shots, hitting Chancey once more in the face 

and once in the abdomen. 

Lee and Yeoman left Chancey’s body in the woods and drove the Silverado 

to Fernandina Beach, Florida, where Yeoman’s family lived. Lee mentioned the 

murder to various friends and acquaintances that day, telling several people that the 

blood in the back of the truck was from a woman he’d killed, and at one point 

calling Chancey a “dead bitch[].” Apparently, none of his friends believed him. 

The police were easier to convince. That night, as Lee was driving with two 

of his friends in the Silverado, a Florida state trooper pulled him over for an 

equipment violation. Lee gave one of his friends a pistol and told him to “get out 

and shoot the cop,” but his friend dropped the pistol on the floor and kicked it 

under the seat. Meanwhile, the trooper discovered that the tag on the Silverado 

was registered to Yeoman’s 1980 Toyota. He soon determined that the Silverado

did not belong to any of its occupants, and that Chancey, whose purse and 

identification were in the Silverado, was missing. When questioned, Lee 

eventually confessed that he had killed Chancey and taken the truck. 

Lee later gave videotaped statements at the scenes of both shootings, 

describing how he had shot Chancey once on the side of the highway, and three 

more times after dumping her in the woods. He told the police that he had planned 

to kill his father and killed Chancey instead of him because she was there. 

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Lee was charged with murder, kidnapping, armed robbery, theft by taking, 

possession of a firearm during commission of a felony, and possession of a firearm 

by a convicted felon. He pleaded not guilty and proceeded to trial in Charlton 

County, Georgia, where Chancey’s body was found. The state elected not to 

prosecute the charge of possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, and the trial 

court granted Lee’s motion for a directed verdict for lack of venue on the charges 

of kidnapping and theft. The jury found Lee guilty of the remaining charges. 

During the sentencing phase, the state presented evidence that at the time of 

the murder, Lee had been on probation for stealing a truck and breaking into a 

church two years earlier. The state also presented evidence that about two months 

before the murder, Lee and a man named Doug Gregory stole a car outside Atlanta

and drove it to Florida. There, Lee and four or five of his friends took Gregory out 

to an area called the Point and brutally beat him. Gregory testified that before the 

beating, Lee told his friends that there was going to be an “initiation,” and that he 

“wanted to see blood, a lot of blood.” Lee started the beating by hitting Gregory 

with a stick about the size of a baseball bat. He hit Gregory at least four times in 

the head with the stick, while his friends beat Gregory with more sticks and a metal 

folding chair until he was covered in blood from head to toe. After the beating, 

Lee threatened Gregory that if he went to the police, he “wasn’t anything but a 

bullet.”

The state also presented evidence that while awaiting trial on the murder 

charge, Lee escaped from jail in Georgia, stole a car and some clothes, and fled to 

Florida. After the police recaptured him, Lee gave yet another audiotaped 

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statement in which he confessed to killing Chancey. For the first time, he claimed 

that he was on “acid” at the time of the murder. He also reiterated, however, that 

he had wanted to kill his father and insisted that he would still kill him, even if he 

were sober. He was angry; he said that his father beat his mother when he was 

little, and his mother turned to drugs when his father left them, so he never really 

had a mother or father. He also swore that he would kill the investigator and the 

GBI agent in charge of his murder case if he ever got the chance and said that he 

would have shot at the police when he was arrested after the escape if he had had a 

gun. When asked if Chancey’s murder was the first time that he had killed 

someone, he responded in the affirmative, but added more: “Yep. But, killing’s so 

easy. Now that I’ve done it once, it wouldn’t be hard doing it.” He qualified this 

chilling statement by saying that he “wouldn’t go out and do it” and he pointed out 

that he had not killed anyone besides Chancey, even when he’d had the 

opportunity. 

Lee presented the testimony of seven mitigation witnesses: Denise Baxley, 

who was one of his elementary school teachers; Johnny Lee, his father; Melton 

Lloyd, his stepfather; Barbara Lloyd, his mother; Mavis Garrison, his house 

mother from the Boys’ Ranch where he lived from the ages of 15 to 17; Daniel 

Grant, Ph.D., a psychologist who performed a battery of neuropsychological tests; 

and Lee himself. 

The first witness was Baxley, Lee’s special education teacher for two years 

when he was seven to nine years old. Lee had been evaluated and placed in a class 

for severely emotionally disturbed students. Lee was very impulsive and had 

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“some basic security problems.” He also had trouble paying attention and was 

being treated with Ritalin for hyperactivity. Baxley testified that she conducted 

occasional home visits as part of the special education program, and she always 

found his home to be in “disarray”—whether he lived alone with his mother or 

with his grandparents. Parental involvement was an integral part of the special 

education program, but although Lee’s mother participated to “the best of her 

ability probably,” she never followed up on Baxley’s suggestions for after-school 

activities, and never really provided any kind of authority figure for Lee. Baxley 

never observed Lee being cruel or mean to other people. 

Lee’s father, Johnny Lee, testified that he had six children and had been 

married seven times. He was married to Lee’s mother Barbara, but the two 

separated when Lee was about five years old. While they were married, Johnny 

and Barbara did “a lot of drinking” and “had fights,” though Johnny testified that 

he could not remember hitting Barbara in front of Lee. Johnny abandoned Lee 

after the separation; he never visited him or paid much child support. Johnny did 

not project a sympathetic picture of himself as a father. But he was not able to

project a sympathetic picture of Lee either; in fact, he admitted that if he were 

asked what Lee’s good qualities were, he probably would not be able to name any. 

Several months before the murder, Johnny bailed Lee out of jail and Lee 

moved in with Johnny and Chancey for two or three months. As far as Johnny was 

aware, Chancey never said an unkind word to Lee. 

Lloyd, Lee’s stepfather, moved in with Lee and his mother Barbara in 1984, 

when Lee was ten, and married her three years later. Before he met Barbara, Lloyd 

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was in prison for 12 years for second-degree murder. Lloyd and Barbara had a 

son, who was Lee’s half-brother. According to Lloyd, Lee loved the boy and 

helped take care of him and look out for him when he was small. Lloyd testified 

that Lee had a good side and was worth saving. 

Lee’s mother testified that she had Lee when she was 19 years old. She 

frequently took narcotic pain medication while she was pregnant with Lee. She

admitted that she had a long-term addiction to prescription drugs, but said that she 

“hope[d]” that she was a good mother to Lee despite her addiction. 

Lee’s father left when Lee was young and never provided financial support. 

His mother testified that she did the best she could on welfare, and that there was 

always enough food to eat. Lee and his mother lived with her parents until Lee 

was about six, and at one point, his mother left Lee with her parents for about a 

year and a half when she moved to Florida with a boyfriend. 

Lee was extremely hyperactive as a child and was placed in the special 

education program because of it. He couldn’t sit still or concentrate; he barked like 

a dog and didn’t talk until he was six years old. He took Ritalin until he was seven 

years old, when someone at the county mental health center told Barbara that the 

Ritalin was actually making Lee’s condition worse. 

When Lee was about 13 years old, his mother contacted the Sheriff’s Boys’ 

Ranch and began the process to have Lee admitted to the program. Lee spent two 

years at the Boys’ Ranch, from age 15 to age 17. After the Boys’ Ranch, Lee 

couldn’t keep a job and just hung around the house. He never had many friends, 

but he was not mean or violent. Lee hated his father for abandoning him. 

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Mavis Garrison, Lee’s house mother at the Boys’ Ranch, testified that Lee 

did well in the structured environment there. From what Lee and the social worker 

told her, Garrison thought that Lee’s problems with authority and anger came from 

his home life, where there were “many problems,” including drugs and alcohol. 

Lee was very angry with his father for abandoning him. He was also angry with 

his mother, who he thought had rejected him for his stepfather. Lee called Mr. and 

Mrs. Garrison “mom” and “pop”; he told Garrison that she had been more of a 

mother to him than anyone ever had. There were times that Lee became defensive 

or angry at the Boys’ Ranch, but Garrison was never afraid of Lee, and he always 

came back and reconciled with her after an argument, telling her that he loved her. 

Lee frequently returned to visit the Garrisons at the Boys’ Ranch; he was married 

at the chapel there and the Garrisons held a wedding reception for him. Garrison 

became emotional during her testimony; she said that she loved Lee, that he was a 

“very loving and caring person,” and that he was “very much worth saving.” 

Dr. Grant testified that he spent 17 or 18 hours with Lee, conducting 

neuropsychological tests and interviewing him, and he reviewed school records 

covering kindergarten through sixth or seventh grade, including two school 

psychological evaluations. He also reviewed the state psychologist’s report from 

his pretrial evaluation of Lee. Based on his evaluation, Dr. Grant testified that Lee 

was of low average intelligence and suffered from attention deficit disorder with 

hyperactivity and polysubstance abuse. Lee’s attention disorder meant that he had 

a hard time staying on task. It also meant that he was restless and impulsive, and 

had a hard time controlling his behavior. Individuals with ADHD are born that 

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way, he said, although he did not suggest that the condition meant Lee was not

responsible for his behavior. Based on the early age of manifestation, Lee had a 

severe and more refractory case of ADHD; he had not grown out of his disorder. 

Dr. Grant also noted that people with early-onset ADHD were more likely to 

develop other psychopathologies—like oppositional defiance disorder, substance 

abuse, or “shifting of moods”—but adjust very well with a structured environment 

(such as prison) and medication. 

Dr. Grant testified that it would not be uncommon for someone with Lee’s 

condition to lie or boast to project an image of bravado or toughness as a cover for 

their low self-esteem. In Lee’s case, he acted tough to cover his feelings of 

abandonment. Lee did not come across as mean or malicious in Dr. Grant’s 

interviews, and Dr. Grant saw nothing in Lee’s school records he reviewed to 

indicate that he had ever been aggressive toward people. When asked whether 

people with Lee’s condition would be more likely to carry out their threats, Dr. 

Grant reiterated that those with hyperactivity had a hard time regulating and 

controlling their emotions and behavior. 

According to Dr. Grant, Lee’s home environment made his condition much 

worse, because “starting very early in his life, there was deprivation at times, 

where there wasn’t even adequate food in the home, the abandonment by his 

father, that his father left. There was a lot of abuse, frequent changing and 

inconsistent rules or caregivers.” None of Lee’s early caregivers appeared to be a 

positive influence: “You know, he and his mother lived together for awhile, and 

she had a problem with substance abuse and was inconsistent in her behavior. A 

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lot of times, he was left alone. Then, you know, they stayed with his grandparents, 

and there was some physical abuse as well as neglect.” Still, Dr. Grant testified 

that one thing mattered even more to Lee: the absence of his father. As he 

explained it to the jury, “more importantly, what he talks about when I interviewed 

him, and what’s in several of the school reports, is the fact of his being abandoned, 

especially, you know, with his father, of not having—And his father had other 

children later, and his father would participate with those children but wouldn’t 

with Jamie, so there’s a lot of—You know, that really had a very powerful 

negative impact on his development.” 

Against his attorneys’ advice, Lee testified on his own behalf at sentencing. 

Lee testified that he “thought” that he had killed Chancey, but he recalled shooting 

her in the back of the head as she leaned over to look into the Toyota, which did 

not line up with the evidence that she was shot in the face. For the first time, Lee 

disclosed that he had gone inside his father’s home with Yeoman when her 

attempts to lure Chancey out were unsuccessful; he had previously told the police 

that he waited nearby while Yeoman finally persuaded Chancey. He said that he 

told Chancey that a friend (who “didn’t want to be known”) had given him a ride 

to the trailer and was waiting outside for him, but he still needed her to bring the 

Silverado and help him crank the broken-down car. 

Lee’s testimony at sentencing was otherwise generally consistent with his 

statements to the police—he admitted that he and Yeoman lured Chancey out to 

the highway and that he shot her, dumped her body in the woods, and shot her 

again. This time, however, Lee insisted that Chancey was dead after he fired the 

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first shot; he denied that her hand had moved after he dumped her body. He could 

not say why he had fired at her three more times, or why he had told the police that 

Chancey grabbed him. 

When asked why he shot Chancey, Lee said that he was upset with his father 

because of “the things that he had done to [Lee] when [he] was small and the 

things that he had done to [Lee’s] mother, and the life that she chose from those 

things.” Lee said, “It upset me and it hurt me, and when she got there and it wasn’t 

him, I still had those emotions and those feelings going, and they control me.” Lee 

said that he was sorry he killed Chancey, more so since he had been baptized 

(while in prison) and realized that Christ died for him and for Chancey. He said 

that he liked Chancey, and that she had never been mean to him or done anything 

bad that he knew of. 

Lee also said that he would not really have shot at the police after he was 

pulled over or when he was recaptured after his escape from jail. He claimed that 

he had not really told his friend to shoot the police officer who pulled them over; 

he just told his friends to say that later so that they would not get in trouble. As for 

his statement to the police that it was easy to kill or that he wanted to kill his 

father, he denied that he meant that either—although, he added, he probably would 

have killed his father if he had been home that night. On cross-examination, Lee 

admitted writing a letter to his girlfriend while he was in jail that said (of his 

father), “I hate him. I believe he knows it. I’ll kill him if I ever get my hands on 

him, which will be never or in hell.” 

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Lee did admit that he participated in the beating of Doug Gregory, but 

denied that he said anything about an initiation and explained that Gregory had 

been spying on girls in the shower in the house where all of them were staying. He 

asked the jury to show mercy and sentence him to life with the possibility of 

parole, or at worst, life without parole. 

After deliberating for a little more than two hours, the jury returned a 

sentencing verdict of death. The jury found four statutory aggravating factors: 

(1) the murder was committed while the defendant was engaged in the commission 

of another capital felony (kidnapping with bodily injury); (2) the murder was 

committed while the defendant was engaged in the commission of another capital 

felony (armed robbery); (3) the defendant committed the murder for himself or for 

another for the purpose of receiving money or something of monetary value; and 

(4) the murder was outrageously or wantonly vile, horrible, or inhumane, in that it 

involved aggravated battery to the victim before death. 

The trial court sentenced Lee to death for murder, life in prison for armed 

robbery, and five years consecutive for the firearm charge. See Lee v. State, 270 

Ga. 798, 799 n.1 (1999). The Georgia Supreme Court unanimously affirmed Lee’s 

convictions and sentences, and the U.S. Supreme Court denied Lee’s petition for 

certiorari and petition for rehearing. Id. at 803; Lee v. Georgia, 528 U.S. 1006 

(1999) (Mem.), reh’g denied, 528 U.S. 1145 (2000) (Mem.).

B. 

Lee filed a state petition for habeas corpus, arguing, among other things, that 

his trial counsel was constitutionally ineffective during the sentencing phase. At 

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the evidentiary hearing on his petition, Lee’s trial attorneys testified live and Lee 

presented numerous affidavits, as well as extensive school and medical records, 

records from the Boys’ Ranch, and records from the Department of Corrections. 

As relevant to the claim before us, Lee presented affidavits from relatives 

and neighbors testifying that Lee’s mother abused and neglected him throughout 

his childhood. According to these witnesses, his mother was usually drunk or on 

drugs, with a different man or group of men at a local bar or hanging around the 

house. Lee was described as constantly filthy and stinking, with lice in his hair, 

wearing filthy rags, and with rotting teeth, a sign of possible malnourishment. He 

begged for food from neighbors, telling them that he was hungry because he had 

worms. His home was also described as filthy, with dirty clothes, dishes, beer and 

prescription bottles, roaches, and garbage strewn everywhere. Lee complained to 

one relative that he had rats crawling in his bed. 

As a baby and toddler, Lee jumped and bounced in his crib constantly—

likely as self-stimulation or to get his mother’s attention—to the extent that he 

broke the crib more than once. His grandfather eventually reinforced it with twoby-fours nailed to the wall to form a kind of cage. As a toddler and a child, Lee 

was often left alone in the house, left in the car, or dropped off while his mother 

went out to bars and stayed out overnight or for days at a time. Other times, Lee’s 

mother sent him outside and told him that he could not come back in until dark. 

According to the affidavit witnesses, Lee endured physical and emotional 

abuse in addition to neglect—and that abuse was described as constant and vicious. 

Lee’s mother frequently “beat the crap” out of him, even as a toddler, slapping him 

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hard enough to leave a mark, punching him, or swinging him around by his hair, 

usually for little or no reason. She typically called him names like “little bastard” 

or “fuckhead,” and yelled at him, again, with little or no provocation. Neighbors 

and family members said that they never really heard Lee’s mother say anything 

nice to him or saw her hold him or play with him. One relative could not 

remember Lee’s mother ever speaking to him in a normal voice—she always 

yelled at him, even if he was a few feet away, and would call him over to the couch 

to slap him. 

Witnesses described several specific instances of physical abuse, including 

one time when Lee was two years old and his mother slapped him hard across the 

face, leaving a mark. When his aunt protested, Lee’s mother said that he was her 

child and she could do what she wanted to him—she could “take him by the feet 

and slap him up against the wall if she wanted to,” or “splatter the little 

motherfucker’s brains everywhere” if she felt like it. Another witness described an 

incident when Lee was little (four or five years old) and grabbed his mother’s shirt 

to get her attention. She responded by punching him in the mouth so hard that he 

flew backwards, bleeding from his mouth. Other witnesses recalled similar 

instances of Lee’s mother punching him with no provocation, knocking him down 

and kicking him in the head, or cussing him out, slapping him, and sending him to 

his room when he asked for a glass of water. Lee’s relatives described him as 

cowering and afraid of his mother, but loving and eager to please when she was not 

around. 

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One of Lee’s elementary school teachers reported Lee’s mother to the state 

children’s services agency after Lee came to school with welts on his arms and 

face that were “horrifying to view.” To the teacher’s knowledge, the agency did 

nothing in response to her complaint. 

Affidavits presented to the state postconviction court also indicated that Lee 

showed signs of emotional damage as a child. He often acted like a dog, panting 

and crawling on all fours and barking instead of speaking. This behavior went

beyond normal play—so much so that it troubled those who saw it. In school, he 

often talked about how much he hated his father for leaving him and his mother 

alone, but also said that he wanted to see his father. In kindergarten, he would 

often slap and hit himself in the face and say that he wanted to kill himself. At 

home, he would bang his head against the wall. As a preschooler, he once put his 

head under the tire of his mother’s car. 

Based on the new information about childhood abuse and additional records 

provided by habeas counsel, Dr. Grant testified that his earlier diagnosis of ADHD 

was “wholly inadequate to explain or define Jamie’s emotional and mental 

disabilities and how these disabilities related to the death of his father’s girlfriend.” 

Dr. Grant opined that, at the time of the murder, Lee was suffering from PostTraumatic Stress Disorder as a result of the “repeated and savage abuse” he 

suffered at the hands of his own mother. 

Lee also presented the affidavit testimony of a new psychological expert, 

Catherine Boyer, Ph.D., who stated that Lee was “significantly impaired 

emotionally, psychologically, and cognitively” as a result of the abuse and neglect 

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he suffered, and that “unlike most cases, there is a direct relationship between the 

neglect and abuse, the resulting impairments and the crime.” 

The state habeas court granted Lee’s petition, finding that Lee’s trial counsel 

“rendered prejudicially deficient performance in investigating Mr. Lee’s potential 

sentencing phase defenses and in preparing and presenting the mitigation defenses 

counsel did utilize.” The state court judge presiding over the habeas 

proceedings—a different judge than the one who presided over Lee’s trial and 

imposed his sentence—explained that “Mr. Lee’s early life bears all the hallmarks 

of a strong mitigation case: a boy whose troubles began before he got out of the 

womb, he was born into a home rife with abuse, neglect, and trauma at the hands 

of his addicted caregivers. Nearly every aspect of his early life was uniquely 

troubled; nevertheless, the State was able to argue credibly to the jury that Mr. Lee 

was like a million other kids with a learning disability and a single mom.” 

The Georgia Supreme Court reversed in a unanimous opinion. See Hall v. 

Lee, 286 Ga. 79 (2009). The Court discussed counsel’s mitigation investigation 

and strategy with what seemed like approval, but ultimately decided that it need 

not address counsel’s performance under Strickland because Lee had not made the 

required showing of prejudice. Id. at 81–86. 

C.

Lee filed a petition for federal habeas review in the Southern District of 

Georgia, pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2254. The district court denied Lee’s habeas 

petition but granted him a certificate of appealability on one issue: “whether the 

Georgia Supreme Court’s determination—that Lee was not prejudiced by any 

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deficiency on the part of Lee’s trial counsel in investigating, developing, preparing, 

and presenting mitigating evidence at Lee’s sentencing—involved an unreasonable 

application of clearly established Federal law or was based on an unreasonable 

determination of the facts in light of the evidence presented.” 

II.

Federal courts are authorized to grant habeas corpus relief to a state prisoner 

“only on the ground that he is in custody in violation of the Constitution or laws or 

treaties of the United States.” 28 U.S.C. § 2254(a). We review a district court’s 

denial of habeas relief under § 2254 de novo. Brooks v. Comm’r, Alabama Dep’t 

of Corr., 719 F.3d 1292, 1299 (11th Cir. 2013).

As amended by the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996

(AEDPA), § 2254(d) limits the power of federal courts to grant relief on a claim 

that was denied on the merits by a state court to occasions where the state court’s 

decision “was contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly 

established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States”

or “was based on an unreasonable determination of the facts in light of the 

evidence presented in the State court proceeding.” A state court’s decision is 

“contrary to” clearly established federal law if the state court either reaches a 

conclusion opposite to the Supreme Court of the United States on a question of law 

or reaches a different outcome than the Supreme Court in a case with “materially 

indistinguishable facts.” Williams v. Taylor, 529 U.S. 362, 412–13 (2000). 

“Under the ‘unreasonable application’ clause, a federal habeas court may grant the 

writ if the state court identifies the correct governing legal principle” from 

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Supreme Court precedents “but unreasonably applies that principle to the facts of 

the prisoner’s case.” Id. at 413.

Lee does not contend that the Georgia Supreme Court’s decision was 

“contrary to” U.S. Supreme Court precedent, and there is no question that the state 

court correctly identified Strickland as establishing the applicable legal standard. 

See Evans v. Sec’y, Dep’t of Corr., 703 F.3d 1316, 1327 (11th Cir. 2013) (en 

banc). We must determine, therefore, whether the state court’s decision involved 

an unreasonable application of the Strickland standard to the facts of Lee’s case.2

 

To grant relief under the “unreasonable application” clause, we must find that the 

state court’s decision was “‘objectively unreasonable,’ not merely wrong; even 

‘clear error’ will not suffice.” White v. Woodall, 572 U.S. 415, 419 (2014)

(quoting Lockyer v. Andrade, 538 U.S. 63, 75–76 (2003)). This means that to 

obtain federal habeas relief, “a state prisoner must show that the state court’s ruling 

on the claim being presented in federal court was so lacking in justification that 

there was an error well understood and comprehended in existing law beyond any 

possibility for fairminded disagreement.” Harrington v. Richter, 562 U.S. 86, 103

(2011). We proceed, therefore, by setting out the relevant legal standards for 

2 Lee also argues that the Georgia Supreme Court made unreasonable and clearly erroneous

findings of fact. As relevant to our analysis, Lee contends that the Georgia Supreme Court 

erroneously discounted his new affidavit evidence because it found that “much of it” was 

properly excluded by the habeas court as hearsay or speculation. Lee concedes that some of the 

affidavit testimony may be hearsay, but he notes that the habeas court excluded only a small 

portion of what was challenged, not “much of it.” Lee has not pointed to any specific relevant 

evidence that the Georgia Supreme Court discounted or declined to consider on this ground, 

however—indeed, the Court’s opinion made specific references to its review of the new expert 

testimony and evidence of abuse that Lee relies on in this Court. Because Lee cannot show that 

the state court’s decision “was based on” the challenged findings, they provide no basis for 

federal habeas relief whether or not those findings were unreasonable. 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(2).

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ineffective-assistance claims and reviewing the Georgia Supreme Court’s 

application of those standards to the facts of Lee’s case.

III.

To prevail on his Sixth Amendment ineffective-assistance claim, Lee was 

required to make the familiar two-pronged showing required by Strickland: “First, 

the defendant must show that counsel’s performance was deficient. This requires 

showing that counsel made errors so serious that counsel was not functioning as 

the ‘counsel’ guaranteed the defendant by the Sixth Amendment. Second, the 

defendant must show that the deficient performance prejudiced the defense. This 

requires showing that counsel’s errors were so serious as to deprive the defendant 

of a fair trial, a trial whose result is reliable.” Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 

668, 687 (1984). Because the petitioner must make the required showing on both 

prongs of the Strickland test, a court may conduct its inquiry in any order and need 

not address both components of the test if the petitioner’s showing falls short on 

either one. Id. at 697. In particular, where it is easier to avoid assessing counsel’s 

performance and resolve the petitioner’s claim on the ground that he has not made 

a sufficient showing of prejudice, courts are encouraged to do so. Id.

That is the route that the Georgia Supreme Court took, and we too “begin 

and end our analysis with Strickland’s prejudice prong.” Brooks, 719 F.3d at 1301. 

To show prejudice under Strickland, the “defendant must show that there is a 

reasonable probability that, but for counsel’s unprofessional errors, the result of the 

proceeding would have been different. A reasonable probability is a probability 

sufficient to undermine confidence in the outcome.” Strickland, 466 U.S. at 694. 

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“This does not require a showing that counsel’s actions ‘more likely than not 

altered the outcome,’ but the difference between Strickland’s prejudice standard 

and a more-probable-than-not standard is slight and matters ‘only in the rarest 

case.’” Harrington, 562 U.S. at 111–12 (quoting Strickland, 466 U.S. at 693, 697). 

And the “likelihood of a different result must be substantial, not just conceivable.” 

Id. at 112. 

In evaluating prejudice in a capital sentencing proceeding, the question is 

whether there is a reasonable probability that, in the absence of counsel’s errors, 

the sentencer “would have concluded that the balance of aggravating and 

mitigating circumstances did not warrant death.” Strickland, 466 U.S. at 695. The 

reviewing court must therefore reweigh all of the available mitigating evidence, 

including the newly gathered evidence presented in the habeas proceedings, against 

the evidence presented in aggravation. Wiggins v. Smith, 539 U.S. 510, 534, 536

(2003). The Georgia Supreme Court conducted this exercise and concluded that it 

saw no reasonable probability that the jury would have returned a different 

sentencing verdict if the additional mitigating evidence that Lee submitted during 

the state habeas proceeding had been presented at trial. Lee, 286 Ga. at 87–97.

Lee argues that this decision was an unreasonable application of Strickland 

because in reaching its conclusion, the state court unreasonably discounted his new 

mitigating evidence and overstated the evidence in aggravation. We do not 

agree—and we reiterate that under AEDPA, the question before any federal court 

is not whether we would reach the same conclusion as the state court if we were to 

reweigh the evidence ourselves, but whether there is any “possibility fairminded 

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jurists could disagree that the state court’s decision conflicts with” relevant 

Supreme Court precedents. Harrington, 562 U.S. at 102. If so, then we lack the 

authority to grant habeas relief. Id. at 102–03; see Brooks, 719 F.3d at 1300.

Here there is, at the very least, room for debate. To begin, this is not a case 

where the jury had no mitigation evidence to consider at sentencing. Although 

Lee’s trial presentation lacked the vivid detail provided by his habeas witnesses, 

the jury heard that Lee was disadvantaged, neglected, and abused throughout his 

childhood. They learned that Lee’s parents drank heavily and fought violently 

when he was little, and that Lee’s mother abused prescription drugs, smoked 

marijuana, and neglected Lee to the point that he didn’t always have enough to eat. 

They heard about Lee’s placement in a class for severely emotionally disturbed 

children, his basic security issues, and his behavioral problems. Dr. Grant testified 

that Lee endured “a lot of abuse,” including physical abuse as well as neglect, and 

that his emotional and behavioral problems were made much worse by his home

environment. The jury also heard that people with Lee’s condition tended to be 

boastful, and had difficulty controlling their emotions and behavior. 

In addition to describing Lee’s impoverished and difficult childhood and 

psychological condition, some of Lee’s sentencing-phase witnesses also gave 

positive testimony about his character as an adult. Lee’s stepfather testified that 

Lee was close to and helped care for his young stepbrother, and Lee’s housemother 

from the Boys’ Ranch spoke of him with genuine and tearful affection. 

The affidavit testimony submitted to the state habeas court added to this 

somewhat basic picture by providing graphic and horrifying descriptions of the 

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physical and emotional abuse and neglect Lee endured at his mother’s hands—

details showing a frequency and severity of abuse that was only hinted at during 

Lee’s trial presentation. These details led Dr. Grant to retroactively diagnose Lee 

with PTSD, and Lee’s new expert witness testified that Lee’s emotional problems 

likely contributed to his involvement in the murder.

Still, the Georgia Supreme Court’s decision that the combined weight of 

Lee’s mitigating evidence would not have changed the sentencing verdict was not 

objectively unreasonable. The state court discussed Lee’s mitigating evidence, old 

and new, in detail and concluded that the frequent slaps, occasional punches or 

kicks, neglect, and verbal abuse described by Lee’s witnesses did not establish that 

his childhood was “so harmful or horrific” that it might be expected to reduce 

Lee’s moral culpability in the eyes of a jury. Lee, 286 Ga. at 87–92 (citing 

Wiggins, 539 U.S. at 538, in which the U.S. Supreme Court held that the 

defendant’s evidence of torture, severe deprivation, and sexual abuse was 

reasonably likely to change the outcome at sentencing).

The state court also pointed out that Lee’s new expert testimony failed to 

make a convincing connection between the psychological impact of his childhood 

abuse and his actions on the night of the murder. Dr. Grant testified that the 

additional evidence of abuse would have enabled him to diagnose Lee with PTSD 

and explain the connection between Lee’s PTSD and his crimes, but he never 

actually provided any such explanation. And Dr. Boyer’s opinion that his 

“impaired impulse control, impaired emotional control, high levels of distress, and 

his inability to structure or stabilize his own life” made him “particularly 

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vulnerable to involvement in the murder” was not meaningfully different from Dr. 

Grant’s trial testimony that people like Lee with ADHD were impulsive and 

overactive, had problems with planning and organization, and had difficulty 

controlling their emotions and behavior. 

Moreover, the aggravating evidence presented to the jury was substantial. 

This included evidence that Lee had planned to kill his father, and that when he 

found out that his father was not home, he decided that Chancey would make a 

good enough substitute—despite her past kindness to him. Lee’s testimony at 

sentencing also revealed that when Yeoman was unable to convince Chancey to

help, Lee himself went into the home to talk to her. The story that Lee says he 

gave Chancey to account for his presence—that he had a mysterious friend with a 

car who did not want Chancey to see him and who was willing to drive Lee back 

and forth from the broken-down Toyota but was inexplicably unable to help him 

jump start it—was exceedingly flimsy. Lee’s testimony that this unlikely tale 

persuaded Chancey to come out in the middle of the night cast a sinister light on 

the evidence that she left her home in panties and a nightshirt, barefoot and without 

her dentures, and it opened the door to the prosecutor’s argument that she did not 

go voluntarily. 

The evidence also showed that, however Chancey got to the scene, the 

murder itself was cold-blooded and brutal—after coaxing Chancey out of her home

by telling her that he needed her help, Lee shot her in the face, drove her wounded 

and bleeding to the middle of nowhere, dumped her in the woods, and shot her 

again when she grabbed his hand. Lee showed no remorse for killing Chancey—

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and indeed, bragged about it to his friends—until after he was caught. And finally, 

the state presented evidence that Lee had brutally beaten a man months before the 

murder because he wanted to “see blood, a lot of blood,” that he had tried to 

convince one of his friends to shoot a state trooper after the murder, that he said he 

would have shot at the police after his escape from jail if he had had a gun, and that 

he threatened to kill his father and the officers who investigated Chancey’s murder

if he ever had the chance.

In short, it was not unreasonable for the Georgia Supreme Court to conclude 

that there is no reasonable probability of a different result if Lee’s trial attorneys 

had collected and presented the mitigating evidence proffered to the state habeas 

court. That is all that AEDPA requires. “It bears repeating that even a strong case 

for relief does not mean the state court’s contrary conclusion was unreasonable.” 

Harrington, 562 U.S. at 102. And because the state court’s decision was at least 

arguably correct, we are precluded from granting Lee’s petition for federal habeas 

relief. See id. at 102–03; Brooks, 719 F.3d at 1300.

IV.

The denial of Lee’s petition for a writ of habeas corpus is AFFIRMED.

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