Curry v. McDonald

In Curry v. McDonald, Illinois state prisoner Anthony Curry filed a federal habeas corpus petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2254 challenging his 2004 first-degree murder conviction for the shooting death of Torrence Brown. Curry argued that his trial counsel provided ineffective assistance by failing to investigate and present alibi witnesses, and he advanced a freestanding claim of actual innocence. The respondent was Michael McDonald, the warden of Danville Correctional Center. On October 15, 2018, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois denied the petition. The court held that the Illinois Appellate Court’s rejection of Curry’s claims was neither contrary to nor an unreasonable application of clearly established federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court. The court further found that Curry had not presented new evidence sufficient to open the gateway for an actual innocence claim under Schlup v. Delo.

The district court denied the petition for a writ of habeas corpus and declined to issue a certificate of appealability.

Whether Curry’s trial counsel was constitutionally ineffective for failing to call alibi witnesses, and whether the state court’s denial of post-conviction relief constituted an unreasonable application of Strickland v. Washington.

The case underscores the substantial deference federal courts must afford to state court decisions under AEDPA, particularly the difficulty of overturning convictions based on ineffective-assistance claims when state courts have already reasonably adjudicated them.