Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/558bv.pdf
Page Number: 462.0

Cite as: 558 U. S. 290 (2010) 

301 

Opinion of the Court 

for  the  sake  of  argument  that  the  factual  determination  at 
issue  should  be  reviewed,  as  Wood  urges,  only  under 
§ 2254(d)(2)  and  not  under  § 2254(e)(1).  We  conclude  that, 
under § 2254(d)(2), the state court’s ﬁnding that Wood’s coun­
sel  made  a  strategic  decision  not  to  pursue  or  present  evi­
dence of Wood’s mental deﬁciencies was not an unreasonable 
determination of the facts in light of the evidence presented 
in  the  state-court  proceedings.  We  therefore  do  not  need 
to  decide  whether  that  determination  should  be  reviewed 
under  the  arguably  more  deferential  standard  set  out  in 
§ 2254(e)(1). 

As  we  have  observed  in  related  contexts,  “[t]he  term  ‘un­
reasonable’ is no doubt difﬁcult to deﬁne.”  Williams v.  Tay­
lor,  529  U. S.  362,  410  (2000).  It  sufﬁces  to  say,  however, 
that  a  state-court  factual  determination  is  not  unreasonable 
merely because the federal habeas court would have reached 
a  different  conclusion  in  the  ﬁrst  instance.  Cf.  id.,  at  411. 
In  Rice,  for  example,  in  which  we  assumed,  arguendo,  that 
only § 2254(d)(2) and not § 2254(e)(1) applied, 546 U. S., at 339, 
we rejected the Ninth Circuit’s conclusion that a state-court 
factual  determination  was  unreasonable.  We  noted  that 
even  if  “[r]easonable  minds  reviewing  the  record  might  dis­
agree” about the ﬁnding in question, “on habeas review that 
does not sufﬁce to supersede the trial court’s . . . determina­
tion.”  Id., at 341–342. 

In this case, the evidence in the state-court record demon­
strated  that  all  of  Wood’s  counsel  read  the  Kirkland  report. 
App. 12, 174, 210, 283.  Trotter testiﬁed that Dozier told him 
that  nothing  in  the  report  merited  further  investigation,  a 
recollection  that  is  supported  by  contemporaneous  letters 
Trotter wrote to Dozier and Ralph noting that no independ­
ent  psychological  evaluations  had  been  conducted  because 
Dozier had said they would not be needed.  Id., at 283, 343, 
345.  Trotter also told the sentencing judge that counsel did 
not intend to introduce the Kirkland report to the jury.  Id., 
at  12.  This  evidence  in  the  state-court  record  can  fairly  be