288
Opinion of the Court
tive assistance of appellate counsel because his counsel, although filing a merits brief, failed to raise a particular claim. It will likely be easier to do so. In Jones v. Barnes, 463 U. S. 745 (1983), we held that appellate counsel who files a merits brief need not (and should not) raise every nonfrivolous claim, but rather may select from among them in order to maximize the likelihood of success on appeal. Notwithstanding Barnes, it is still possible to bring a Strickland claim based on counsel's failure to raise a particular claim, but it is difficult to demonstrate that counsel was incompetent. See, e. g., Gray v. Greer, 800 F. 2d 644, 646 (CA7 1986) ("Generally, only when ignored issues are clearly stronger than those presented, will the presumption of effective assistance of counsel be overcome"). With a claim that counsel erroneously failed to file a merits brief, it will be easier for a defendant-appellant to satisfy the first part of the Strickland test, for it is only necessary for him to show that a reasonably competent attorney would have found one non-frivolous issue warranting a merits brief, rather than showing that a particular nonfrivolous issue was clearly stronger than issues that counsel did present. In both cases, however, the prejudice analysis will be the same.16
16 Federal judges are, of course, fully capable of assessing prejudice in this area, including for the very sorts of claims that Robbins has raised. See, e. g., Duhamel v. Collins, 955 F. 2d 962, 967 (CA5 1992) (defendant not prejudiced by appellate counsel's failure to challenge sufficiency of the evidence); Banks v. Reynolds, 54 F. 3d 1508, 1515-1516 (CA10 1995) (finding both parts of Strickland test satisfied where appellate counsel failed to raise claim of violation of Brady v. Maryland, 373 U. S. 83 (1963)); Cross v. United States, 893 F. 2d 1287, 1290-1291, 1292 (CA11) (rejecting challenge to appellate counsel's failure to raise claim of violation of Faretta v. California, 422 U. S. 806 (1975), by determining that there was no prejudice), cert. denied, 498 U. S. 849 (1990). Since Robbins was convicted in state court, we have no occasion to consider whether a per se prejudice approach, in lieu of Strickland's actual-prejudice requirement, might be appropriate in the context of challenges to federal convictions where counsel was deficient in failing to file a merits brief on direct appeal. See Goeke v. Branch, 514 U. S. 115, 119 (1995) (per curiam) (distinguishing
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