Fields v. United States

Issue: (1) Whether the Fifth Circuit's categorical rule that counsel’s failure to investigate and present even the most compelling mitigating evidence of mental illness can never prejudice the defendant at sentencing, because such evidence always establishes a degree of dangerousness presumed to outweigh any jury finding of decreased culpability, is consistent with this Court's Sixth, Eighth and Fourteenth Amendment decisions; and (2) whether the Fifth Circuit’s decision denying petitioner an evidentiary hearing regarding his competence to proceed pro se is consistent with the jurisprudence of this Court and the plain language of 28 U.S.C. § 2255, which requires an evidentiary hearing “[u]nless the motion and the files and records of the case conclusively show that the prisoner is entitled to no relief.”