376
Stevens, J., dissenting
It was mistaken. The Supremacy Clause demands that state law yield to federal law, but neither federal supremacy nor any other principle of federal law requires that a state court's interpretation of federal law give way to a (lower) federal court's interpretation. In our federal system, a state trial court's interpretation of federal law is no less authoritative than that of the federal court of appeals in whose circuit the trial court is located. See Steffel v. Thompson, 415 U. S. 452, 482, n. 3 (1974) (Rehnquist, J., concurring); United States ex rel. Lawrence v. Woods, 432 F. 2d 1072, 1075-1076 (CA7 1970), cert. denied, 402 U. S. 983 (1971); Shapiro, State Courts and Federal Declaratory Judgments, 74 Nw. U. L. Rev. 759, 771, 774 (1979). An Arkansas trial court is bound by this Court's (and by the Arkansas Supreme Court's and Arkansas Court of Appeals') interpretation of federal law, but if it follows the Eighth Circuit's interpretation of federal law, it does so only because it chooses to and not because it must.
I agree with the Court's holding that the Court of Appeals misinterpreted the Sixth Amendment. I wish to make it clear that it misinterpreted the Supremacy Clause as well.
Justice Stevens, with whom Justice Blackmun joins, dissenting.
Concerned that respondent Fretwell would otherwise receive the "windfall" of life imprisonment, see ante, at 366, 370, the Court today reaches the astonishing conclusion that deficient performance by counsel does not prejudice a defendant even when it results in the erroneous imposition of a death sentence. The Court's aversion to windfalls seems to disappear, however, when the State is the favored recipient. For the end result in this case is that the State, through the coincidence of inadequate representation and fortuitous timing, may carry out a death sentence that was invalid when imposed.
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