Randy Moore, Lonnie Woolhiser, and a friend kidnapped Kenneth Rogers in December of 1995. After they drove Rogers to a remote area, Moore shot him in the temple, killing him. Two weeks later, Moore confessed to the police of what he had done. He pleaded no contest to felony murder in the state court of Oregon. In a state post-conviction action, Moore claimed that his trial attorney should have moved to suppress the confession to the police. The state post-conviction court denied relief, in part because Moore failed to prove that the counsel’s conduct prejudiced him. The state court relied on the counsel’s statements that, because Moore confessed to his brother Raymond and to Debbie Ziegler before he confessed to the police, and because Raymond Moore and Ziegler could have testified to that effect at trial, even a successful motion to suppress ultimately would have been unavailing. Moore subsequently petitioned for federal habeas relief. The district court denied the petition, and the Ninth Circuit reversed it. The Ninth Court described the state court prejudice ruling as contrary to the ruling of Arizona vs. Fulminante which held that a trial court error in admitting evidence of a confession was not harmless and as an objectively unreasonable application of the ineffective assistance of counsel standard announced in Strickland vs. Washington and Hill vs. Lockhart. In the state court, Moore pleaded no contest to murder for shooting and killing Kenneth Rodgers with a .22 caliber revolver while committing first-degree kidnapping. Moore entered the plea pursuant to a signed plea petition in the expectation that his sentence will be 25 years. At the plea...