Conner, who is serving a Georgia death sentence, sought federal habeas relief from his murder conviction. In an earlier appeal, the Eleventh Circuit held that his intellectual-disability claim was not procedurally barred and remanded the entire case for discovery and an evidentiary hearing. After hearing seven experts, the district court rejected the claim under Georgia’s three-part standard: significantly subaverage intellectual functioning, adaptive deficits, and onset during the developmental period. Conner also challenged penalty-phase counsel’s failure to present mitigation and the prosecutor’s closing arguments. The Eleventh Circuit affirmed. The district court did not clearly err in finding that Conner had not proved intellectual disability by a preponderance of the evidence. The court emphasized that the inquiry was fact-intensive and not reducible to an IQ number, and that Conner had received a fair opportunity to develop expert and psychosocial evidence. The ineffective-assistance claim failed on prejudice because Conner expressly instructed counsel not to present mitigating evidence and offered no evidence that he would have authorized it if counsel had investigated further. The court also agreed that the prosecutor’s references to personal experience seeking the death penalty were improper, but held under AEDPA that the Georgia Supreme Court reasonably found them insufficiently prejudicial to render the sentencing fundamentally unfair. The guilt-phase remark was followed by a curative instruction. The district court’s denial of habeas relief was affirmed.