Cite as: 535 U. S. 162 (2002)
Opinion of the Court
conflict (and thus not obligated to inquire) is that prejudice will be presumed only if the conflict has significantly affected counsel's performance—thereby rendering the verdict unreliable, even though Strickland prejudice cannot be shown. See Sullivan, supra, at 348-349. The trial court's awareness of a potential conflict neither renders it more likely that counsel's performance was significantly affected nor in any other way renders the verdict unreliable. Cf. United States v. Cronic, 466 U. S., at 662, n. 31. Nor does the trial judge's failure to make the Sullivan-mandated inquiry often make it harder for reviewing courts to determine conflict and effect, particularly since those courts may rely on evidence and testimony whose importance only becomes established at the trial.
Nor, finally, is automatic reversal simply an appropriate means of enforcing Sullivan's mandate of inquiry. Despite Justice Souter's belief that there must be a threat of sanction (to wit, the risk of conferring a windfall upon the defendant) in order to induce "resolutely obdurate" trial judges to follow the law, post, at 208, we do not presume that judges are as careless or as partial as those police officers who need the incentive of the exclusionary rule, see United States v. Leon, 468 U. S. 897, 916-917 (1984). And in any event, the Sullivan standard, which requires proof of effect upon representation but (once such effect is shown) presumes prejudice, already creates an "incentive" to inquire into a potential conflict. In those cases where the potential conflict is in fact an actual one, only inquiry will enable the judge to avoid all possibility of reversal by either seeking waiver or replacing a conflicted attorney. We doubt that the deterrence of "judicial dereliction" that would be achieved by an automatic reversal rule is significantly greater.
Since this was not a case in which (as in Holloway) counsel protested his inability simultaneously to represent multiple defendants; and since the trial court's failure to make the Sullivan-mandated inquiry does not reduce the petitioner's
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