Mikal Mahdi faces execution even though the mitigating evidence presented by his defense counsel filled barely 15 transcript pages. The state supreme court has upheld Mikal's death sentence only because it has never properly applied this Court's Sixth Amendment precedent, which explicitly deems capital trial counsel deficient when they uncover indications of childhood trauma and look no further. Had Mahdi's trial counsel conducted a competent investigation into his background, they would have discovered and presented evidence of severe childhood abuse, mental illness, and trauma that would have created a reasonable probability of a life sentence rather than death. Did trial counsel provide ineffective assistance of counsel in violation of the Sixth Amendment by failing to adequately investigate and present mitigating evidence of Mahdi's traumatic background at the penalty phase of his capital trial?

Whether a capital defendant's Sixth Amendment right to effective assistance of counsel is violated when trial counsel fails to fully investigate and present mitigating evidence of childhood trauma