Clifford Darden was convicted of two convenience-store robberies and related firearm offenses after his lawyer, without consulting him, conceded that the evidence established one robbery while arguing that the proof of the other was weak. Darden’s collateral attack claimed ineffective assistance and argued that the concession required presumed prejudice under the Supreme Court’s Cronic exception. The Eleventh Circuit held that the district court properly applied Strickland instead. Cronic presumes prejudice only when counsel entirely fails to subject the prosecution’s case to meaningful adversarial testing; a strategic concession on one set of charges can preserve counsel’s credibility while focusing the defense on weaker charges. The court treated counsel’s choice as a tactical retreat rather than a functional guilty plea, emphasizing that the government still had to prove every element and that counsel vigorously contested the other robbery. The failure to consult Darden about the strategy did not automatically trigger Cronic because the relevant question was whether counsel meaningfully challenged the government’s case, not whether the defendant expressly consented. The court affirmed the denial of collateral relief, establishing an important boundary between strategic concessions and constructive denial of counsel.