Troy Clark v. Rick Thaler, Director

How courts have described this case

Verbatim parenthetical descriptions written by other courts when citing this decision. Ranked by citation-network relevance.

• recognizing broad deference to which counsel is entitled in making tactical decisions in closing argument “because of the broad range of legitimate defense strategy at that stage”
• recognizing broad deference to which counsel is entitled in making tactical decisions in closing argument “because of the broad range of legitimate defense strategy at that stage”
• applying Pinholster and concluding that the federal court must “consider only the record that was before the state habeas court”
• “acknowledgement of certain aspects of the case can be a proper ‘effort to bolster credibility with the jury.’”
• “Under the deferential standard of Strickland, we must ‘affirmatively entertain the range of possible reasons defendant’s counsel may have had for proceeding as they did.” (cleaned up)
• “[P]resenting mitigating factors in a closing argument is not required.”

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).