28 U.S.C. § 2254(d); Harrington, 562 U.S. at 102, 131 S.Ct. 770. As the majority notes, there is no Supreme Court precedent importing the test for ineffective counsel, announced in Strickland, into the Faretta context. Maj. Op. at 161-62. Instead, the cases speak purely in terms of deciding whether a waiver of the right to counsel was knowing, intelligent, and voluntary. See Tovar, 541 U.S. at 88, 124 S.Ct. 1379. The cases that are actually binding upon us, and which were decided post-AEDPA, strictly abide by this requirement and talk purely in terms of unpreparedness, not incompetence. In fact, the leading case on this issue from our Court, James v. Brigano, fails to use the word “competence,” or any of its derivatives, even once in the entire opinion. See also Akins, 648 F.3d at 397 (<HOLDING>). Therefore, in this context, the proper
holding counsels failure to object to victim impact testimony and evidence was not ineffective assistance of counsel when the trial record was silent as to counsels strategy recognizing that in order to prevail on a claim of ineffective assistance of counsel a movant must show that he was prejudiced by his counsels performance holding that a defendants waiver was invalid where he was required to choose between proceeding with unprepared counsel or no counsel holding that defendant failed to show that his trial counsel provided ineffective assistance by failing to adequately investigate the case because record demonstrated that counsel did in fact prepare for trial and interview witnesses holding that although akinss letters reveal that he was worried about his counsels preparation for trial the record does not show that his counsel was unprepared for trial