Opinion ID: 799074
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 11

Heading: Failure to subject the prosecution's case to meaningful adversarial testing

Text: In a related claim, Stephens asserts that the Florida Supreme Court should not have required him to show that he was prejudiced by counsel's alleged errors and should have instead applied the presumption of prejudice under United States v. Cronic, 466 U.S. 648, 104 S.Ct. 2039, 80 L.Ed.2d 657 (1984) because counsel entirely failed to subject the prosecution's case to a meaningful adversarial testing by (a) conceding the underlying felony, (b) laboring under an actual conflict of interest, and (c) failing to attend key depositions. This claim fails for the reasons already addressed. Stephens counsel argued throughout trial that Stephens was guilty of kidnaping and several other serious crimes, but argued that he was not guilty of capital murder. This adversarial testing is apparent throughout all phases of the trial. Likewise, as addressed above, counsel was not laboring under an actual conflict of interest, and was not constructively or actually absent from critical stages of the proceedings, with the exception of several depositions. Thus, the Florida Supreme Court properly required Stephens to demonstrate that he was prejudiced by counsel's alleged errors under Strickland.