170
Opinion of the Court
Because "[o]n the record before us, we [could not] be sure whether counsel was influenced in his basic strategic decisions by the interests of the employer who hired him," ibid., we remanded for the trial court "to determine whether the conflict of interest that this record strongly suggests actually existed," id., at 273.
Petitioner argues that the remand instruction in Wood established an "unambiguous rule" that where the trial judge neglects a duty to inquire into a potential conflict, the defendant, to obtain reversal of the judgment, need only show that his lawyer was subject to a conflict of interest, and need not show that the conflict adversely affected counsel's performance. Brief for Petitioner 21.3 He relies upon the lan-3 Petitioner no longer argues, as he did below and as Justice Souter does now, post, at 202 (dissenting opinion), that the Sixth Amendment requires reversal of his conviction without further inquiry into whether the potential conflict that the judge should have investigated was real. Compare 240 F. 3d 348, 357 (CA4 2001) (en banc), with Tr. of Oral Arg. 23-25. Some Courts of Appeals have read a footnote in Wood v. Georgia, 450 U. S., at 272, n. 18, as establishing that outright reversal is mandated when the trial court neglects a duty to inquire into a potential conflict of interest. See, e. g., Campbell v. Rice, 265 F. 3d 878, 884-885, 888 (CA9 2001); Ciak v. United States, 59 F. 3d 296, 302 (CA2 1995). But see Brien v. United States, 695 F. 2d 10, 15, n. 10 (CA1 1982). The Wood footnote says that Sullivan does not preclude "raising . . . a conflict-of-interest problem that is apparent in the record" and that "Sullivan mandates a reversal when the trial court has failed to make [the requisite] inquiry." Wood, supra, at 272, n. 18. These statements were made in response to the dissent's contention that the majority opinion had "gone beyond" Cuyler v. Sullivan, see 450 U. S., at 272, n. 18, in reaching a conflict-of-interest due process claim that had been raised neither in the petition for certiorari nor before the state courts, see id., at 280 (White, J., dissenting). To the extent the "mandates a reversal" statement goes beyond the assertion of mere jurisdiction to reverse, it is dictum—and dictum inconsistent with the disposition in Wood, which was not to reverse but to vacate and remand for the trial court to conduct the inquiry it had omitted.
Justice Souter labors to suggest that the Wood remand order is part of "a coherent scheme," post, at 194, in which automatic reversal is re-
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