Cite as: 506 U. S. 364 (1993)
Stevens, J., dissenting
reach additional ineffective-assistance claims predicated on counsel's alleged failure to investigate or prepare for the penalty phase. Id., at 1337-1338.7 By the time the case reached the Court of Appeals, deficient performance was conceded, and the Eighth Circuit had only to affirm the District Court conclusion that "a reasonable state trial court would have sustained an objection based on Collins had Fretwell's attorney made one." 946 F. 2d, at 577.8
Thus, counsel's deficient performance, in the form of his failure to discover Collins and bring it to the court's attention, is directly linked to the outcome of respondent's sentencing proceeding. Because of counsel's error, respondent received the death penalty rather than life imprisonment.
7 It should come as no surprise that counsel's conduct gave rise to additional ineffective-assistance claims, founded on other deficiencies. An attorney who makes one error of Strickland proportions is unlikely to have turned in a performance adequate in all other respects. For instance, it may well be more than coincidence that the same counsel who failed to discover United States Court of Appeals precedent holding application of the Arkansas capital sentencing statute to defendants like his client unconstitutional also failed to convince the jury of the existence of any mitigating circumstances in his client's favor. 739 F. Supp., at 1335. The connection in this case between counsel's failure to make a Collins objection and his overall preparation and investigation for the penalty phase seems perfectly clear. Nothing in the Court's opinion today would preclude the District Court, on remand, from considering the lack of an objection as evidence relevant to the larger question of the adequacy of counsel's penalty phase preparation and investigation.
8 I cannot agree with the gloss put on the opinion below by the Court, ante, at 368, and by Justice Thomas in his concurrence, ante, at 375. There is nothing in the text of that opinion to suggest that the Court of Appeals believed the Arkansas trial court bound by the Supremacy Clause to obey Eighth Circuit precedent. The Court of Appeals simply noted that the trial court was "bound by the Supremacy Clause to obey federal constitutional law," 946 F. 2d, at 577 (emphasis added), which is why Eighth Circuit precedent giving content to that law would have been relevant to the trial court's decisionmaking. I see no reason to infer from its plain and correct statement of the law that the Eighth Circuit actually meant to express the view addressed by Justice Thomas.
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