484
Opinion of the Court
3
The Court of Appeals below applied a per se prejudice rule, and granted habeas relief based solely upon a showing that counsel had performed deficiently under its standard. 160 F. 3d, at 536. Unfortunately, this per se prejudice rule ignores the critical requirement that counsel's deficient performance must actually cause the forfeiture of the defend-ant's appeal. If the defendant cannot demonstrate that, but for counsel's deficient performance, he would have appealed, counsel's deficient performance has not deprived him of anything, and he is not entitled to relief. Cf. Peguero v. United States, 526 U. S. 23 (1999) (defendant not prejudiced by court's failure to advise him of his appeal rights, where he had full knowledge of his right to appeal and chose not to do so). Accordingly, we hold that, to show prejudice in these circumstances, a defendant must demonstrate that there is a reasonable probability that, but for counsel's deficient failure to consult with him about an appeal, he would have timely appealed.
In adopting this standard, we follow the pattern established in Strickland and Cronic, and reaffirmed in Robbins, requiring a showing of actual prejudice (i. e., that, but for counsel's errors, the defendant might have prevailed) when the proceeding in question was presumptively reliable, but presuming prejudice with no further showing from the defendant of the merits of his underlying claims when the violation of the right to counsel rendered the proceeding presumptively unreliable or entirely nonexistent. See Strickland, supra, at 493-496; Cronic, 466 U. S., at 658-659; Robbins, ante, at 286-287. Today, drawing on that line of cases and following the suggestion of the Solicitor General, we hold that when counsel's constitutionally deficient performance deprives a defendant of an appeal that he otherwise would have taken, the defendant has made out a successful ineffective assistance of counsel claim entitling him to an appeal.
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