Cite as: 535 U. S. 162 (2002)
Souter, J., dissenting
Careful attention to Wood shows that the case did not involve prospective notice of risk unrealized, and that it held nothing about the general rule to govern in such circumstances. What Wood did decide was how to deal with a possible conflict of interests that becomes known to the trial court only at the conclusion of the trial proceeding at which it may have occurred, and becomes known not to a later habeas court but to the judge who handed down sentences at trial, set probation 19 months later after appeals were exhausted, and held a probation revocation proceeding 4 months after that.4
The Wood defendants were convicted of distributing obscene material as employees of an adult bookstore and theater, after trials at which they were defended by privately retained counsel. 450 U. S., at 262-263. They were each ordered to pay fines and sentenced to 12-month prison terms that were suspended in favor of probation on the condition that they pay their fines in installments, which they failed to do. Id., at 263-264. The Wood Court indicated that by the end of the proceeding to determine whether probation should be revoked because of the defendants' failure to pay, the judge was on notice that defense counsel might have been laboring under a conflict between the interests of the defendant employees and those of their employer, possibly as early as the time the sentences were originally handed down nearly two years earlier, App. 11-16 in Wood v. Georgia, O. T. 1979, No. 79-6027 (Mar. 18, 1977, sentencing). See Wood, 450 U. S., at 272 ("at the revocation hearing, or at earlier stages of the proceedings below"). The fines were so high that the original sentencing assumption must have been that the store and theater owner would pay them; defense counsel was paid by the employer, at least during the trial; the State
4 The same trial judge presided over each stage of these proceedings. See App. 11-41 in Wood v. Georgia, O. T. 1979, No. 79-6027.
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