D.S.C.: Failure to raise excessive force claim within search claim wasn’t IAC

Defense counsel’s failure to raise an excessive force claim as a part of his arrest wasn’t ineffective assistance of counsel on the merits of the arrest or subsequent search. Waters v. United States, 2019 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 128341 (D. S.C. Aug. 1, 2019).*

Plaintiff’s § 1983 arrest claim was barred by Heck v. Humphrey. Parkins v. Nguyen, 2019 U.S. App. LEXIS 23015 (8th Cir. Aug. 1, 2019).*

2254 petitioner exhausted his Fourth Amendment claim in state court and lost. “[T]he state court was not unreasonable to find that the warrantless search that yielded a gun did not violate Petitioner’s Fourth Amendment rights. Petitioner’s trial counsel cannot be ineffective for failing to challenge that search. A motion on that issue would have been a ‘meritless argument’”. McClure v. Palmer, 2019 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 128496 (E.D. Mich. Aug. 1, 2019).* [Note here that Stone abstention wasn’t determinative–it was AEDPA’s unreasonable application test.]