McGhee v. Watson, No. 15-3881 (7th Cir. 2018)
Annotate this CaseAn Illinois jury convicted McGhee of murder and attempted murder. McGhee’s defense attorney asked the judge to poll the jury after the verdict was read. The judge said, “[a]ll right,” but did not conduct the poll; he simply thanked and dismissed the jurors. An Illinois criminal defendant “has the absolute right to poll the jury after it returns its verdict.” Defense counsel did not object when the judge moved directly to closing remarks, nor did he raise the issue in a post-trial motion. McGhee’s appellate lawyer failed to challenge the error on direct review. McGhee’s conviction was affirmed on appeal and in state collateral review. He sought habeas relief under 28 U.S.C. 2254. The Seventh Circuit affirmed the denial of the petition. McGhee’s "Strickland" claims, that his trial counsel was ineffective for failing to object to the judge’s jury-polling error and his appellate counsel was ineffective for failing to raise the judge’s error on appeal, were waived because he did not present them in his section 2254 petition. McGhee procedurally defaulted his claim that appellate counsel was ineffective for failing to challenge trial counsel’s failure to preserve the polling error. McGhee failed to present the claim through one complete round of state-court review.
Some case metadata and case summaries were written with the help of AI, which can produce inaccuracies. You should read the full case before relying on it for legal research purposes.
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.