Belmontes

I. FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND

In our two prior opinions in this case, we summarized the facts and history that related to the issues before us. See Bel- montes II, 414 F.3d at 1102-11; Belmontes I, 350 F.3d at 869 78 This is the first time that we have addressed the claim of penalty-phase ineffective assistance of counsel. Thus, we again recite the history and facts of this case, but this time with an emphasis on those facts that are relevant to the inef- fective assistance of counsel claim, including facts that were determined during post-conviction proceedings and did not appear in our earlier opinions.

A. The Crime, Investigation, and Guilt Phase of Belmontes’s trial

On the morning of Sunday, March 15, 1981, nineteen-year- old Steacy McConnell telephoned her parents and told them that she was afraid because several people, including Bel- montes’s eventual codefendant Domingo Vasquez, had threat- 1 Under California law, a sentencing jury in a death penalty case has only two choices: life without the possibility of parole or death. See Cal. Penal Code § 190.2 (West 1978). If, following a reversal of the capital sentence, the State chooses not to institute further…