Kenneth Hibbler v. James Benedetti

Kenneth Hibbler claims that he was deprived of his Sixth Amendment right to effective assistance of counsel because his counsel induced him to enter a guilty plea at a time when counsel should have known that Hibbler was incompetent. The Nevada Supreme Court rejected this claim, finding that Hibbler’s allegations were belied by the record. This appeal requires us to determine whether it was unreasonable for the state court to make this finding absent an evidentiary hearing. We hold that it was not.

I

In the early morning hours of July 24, 2003, Kenneth Hibbler’s eight-year-old daughter awoke in her father’s apartment to find that her wrist had been slit. She asked her father for help. He told her to go back to sleep and, feeling somewhat groggy, she did.

Hibbler’s daughter awoke sometime later to a knock on the door. It was Clark County Constable Coleman, there to evict Hibbler from his apartment. Hibbler went to the door and looked through the peephole. Rather than answering the door, he returned to his daughter, told her to be quiet, and cut her throat with a razor. He then took her to the bathroom, cut her throat again, and then carried her to the bedroom, where he…