McClellan v. Rapelje, No. 11-1841 (6th Cir. 2013)
Annotate this CaseMcClellan, then age 19, was convicted of first degree murder in connection with a barroom conflict between two groups. McClellan received a mandatory life sentence without parole and a consecutive two-year sentence for a firearm conviction. The district court granted a writ of habeas corpus on the ground that McClellan’s defense lawyer did not provide the effective assistance of counsel required by the Sixth Amendment because the lawyer did not interview numerous eyewitnesses who would have testified that McClellan acted in self-defense. The Sixth Circuit affirmed, rejecting the state’s assertions that the defense lawyer did not violate the ineffective assistance of counsel standard set out in Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668 (1984); that the district court should not have reached the merits because McClellan defaulted his claim by not raising it in a procedurally correct way; and that the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act and recent Supreme Court cases so limit the federal courts’ authority to decide habeas cases on the merits that McClellan’s petition must be dismissed.
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