The record below raises serious questions about whether Petitioner —an individual
whose exposure to lead paint poisoning as a child has had a significant and harmful
impact on his cognitive abilities —received the effective assistance of counsel that he
is guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment. Among other problems, the record indicates
that Petitioner 's attorney failed to explain to Petitioner the terms of his plea agree
ment, leading Petitioner, who ended up with a sentence of 132 months in prison, to
honestly but mistakenly believe that he instead had entered into a plea bargain for
only 72 months in prison.
Yet when Petitioner —represented by different counsel —raised that colorable inef
fective assistance of counsel claim on direct appeal and requested a remand to develop
that claim through an evidentiary hearing, the Fourth Circuit rejected it out of hand,
holding instead that Petitioner must wait to raise that colorable claim in a collateral
proceeding. In doing so, the Fourth Circuit, like eight other circuits, declined to follow
the lead of the First and D.C. Circuits, each of which authorizes defendants to raise
colorable Sixth Amendment ineffectiveness claims on direct appeal, at which point
they are remanded for evidentiary hearings.
The question presented by this case is thus: If a federal defendant on direct appeal
raises a colorable Sixth Amendment claim of ineffective assistance by his counsel in
the district court, with support in the existing record on appeal, should the Court of
Appeals remand the case to the district court to conduct an evidentiary hearing on
the claim rather than require the defendant to wait until a collateral proceeding to
raise the claim?

Whether a defendant on direct appeal should receive a remand for an evidentiary hearing upon showing a colorable Sixth Amendment ineffective-assistance-of-counsel claim