Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/529bv.pdf
Page Number: 481.0

529US2

Unit: $U46

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406

WILLIAMS v. TAYLOR

Opinion of the Court

prisoner had not established by a preponderance of the evi-
dence that the result of his criminal proceeding would have
been different, that decision would be “diametrically differ-
ent,” “opposite in character or nature,” and “mutually op-
posed” to our clearly established precedent because we held
in Strickland that the prisoner need only demonstrate a
“reasonable probability that . . . the result of the proceeding
would have been different.”
Id., at 694. A state-court de-
cision will also be contrary to this Court’s clearly established
precedent if the state court confronts a set of facts that are
materially indistinguishable from a decision of this Court and
nevertheless arrives at a result different from our precedent.
Accordingly, in either of these two scenarios, a federal court
will be unconstrained by § 2254(d)(1) because the state-court
decision falls within that provision’s “contrary to” clause.

On the other hand, a run-of-the-mill state-court decision
applying the correct legal rule from our cases to the facts
of a prisoner’s case would not ﬁt comfortably within
§ 2254(d)(1)’s “contrary to” clause. Assume, for example,
that a state-court decision on a prisoner’s ineffective-
assistance claim correctly identiﬁes Strickland as the con-
trolling legal authority and, applying that framework, re-
jects the prisoner’s claim. Quite clearly, the state-court
decision would be in accord with our decision in Strickland
as to the legal prerequisites for establishing an ineffective-
assistance claim, even assuming the federal court considering
the prisoner’s habeas application might reach a different re-
It is difﬁ-
sult applying the Strickland framework itself.
cult, however, to describe such a run-of-the-mill state-court
decision as “diametrically different” from, “opposite in char-
acter or nature” from, or “mutually opposed” to Strickland,
our clearly established precedent. Although the state-court
decision may be contrary to the federal court’s conception of
how Strickland ought to be applied in that particular case,
the decision is not “mutually opposed” to Strickland itself.