The following excerpt is from Runningeagle v. Ryan, 12 Cal. Daily Op. Serv. 8101, 686 F.3d 758 (9th Cir. 2012):
A state court decision will certainly be contrary to our clearly established precedent if the state court applies a rule that contradicts the governing law set forth in our cases. Take, for example, our decision in Strickland v. Washington. If a state court were to reject a prisoner's claim of ineffective assistance of counsel on the grounds that the prisoner had not established by a preponderance of the evidence that the result of his criminal proceeding would have been different, that decision would be [contrary to] our clearly established precedent because we held in Strickland that the prisoner need only demonstrate a reasonable probability that ... the result of the proceeding would have been different.
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