Whether an attorney’s requirement that a criminal defendant execute a non-disparagement agreement as a condition of representation creates an actual conflict of interest that presumptively prejudices the defendant under Cuyler v. Sullivan, or constitutes a constructive denial of counsel under United States v. Cronic, thereby obviating the need to prove prejudice under Strickland v. Washington?

ii

Whether, under the First and Fourteenth Amend- ments, a state may Constitutionally permit a State to arbitrarily criminalize the creation of an accurate audiovisual record of judicial proceedings by a party to those proceedings when those proceedings are open to the public and document inaccuracies in the official transcript?

This case presents the same question as the now- pending petition for writ of certiorari in 25-1383, In- dian Harbor Insurance Co. et. al. v. Town of Vinton, Louisiana, et. al.:

Does federal common law or state law determine whether a nonsignatory to an arbitration agreement governed by the Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards can use eq- uitable estoppel principles to enforce the agreement?

The Court should hold this petition pending the disposition of Town of Vinton and then dispose of this petition consistently with its ruling in that case.

Whether the cooperative judicial federalism inaugurated by Erie Railroad Co. v. Tompkins, 304 U.S. 64 (1938), and articulated by Lehman Brothers v. Schein, 416 U.S. 386 (1974), requires a federal court sitting in diversity to certify a dispositive question of tort law to the state’s highest court when the state court has expressly reserved that question and the question is of manifest importance to the state?

In United States v. Gonzalez-Lopez, 548 U.S. 140 (2006), this Court held that the erroneous } deprivation of a criminal defendant’s chosen counsel is structural error requiring reversal without ; any showing of prejudice. The deprivation in that case was caused by the trial court. Here, the ; deprivation was engineered by the prosecution, which obtained a pretrial restraint of the assets petitioner needed to retain his chosen counsel by presenting both a grand jury and a Farmer hearing

with an indictment charging a money-laundering conspiracy that was supported by no evidence of petitioner’s agreement or knowledge. The question presented 1s:

Whether the structural-error rule of Gonzalez-Lopez applies when the Government—rather : | than the trial court—engineers the loss of a defendant’s counsel of choice through a pretrial asset , restraint resting on a charge the grand jury was given no evidence to support, and whether Kaley

v. United States, 571 U.S. 320 (2014), forecloses any remedy for that deprivation. Question Two , Whether a court of appeals satisfies 28 U.S.C. § 2253(c), as construed in Miller-El v. Cockrell, 537 U.S. 322 (2003), and Buck v. Davis, 580 U.S. 100 (2017), when it denies a certificate of appealability in a single sentence and without analysis, in a case where the district court rejected a freestanding structural-error claim by applying the prejudice standard of Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668 (1984), and without addressing controlling circuit precedent. | i

Title 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1) categorially bars all convicted felons (meaning those convicted of “a crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year’) from possessing firearms “in or af- fecting commerce” or which have been “shipped or transported in interstate or foreign commerce.” Vecera’s conviction under this statute presents two issues:

1. Does § 922(g)(1) violate the Second Amendment, facially or as applied to Vecera?

2. Does § 922(g)(1) exceed Congress’s powers under the Com- merce Clause?