Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/558bv.pdf
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290 

OCTOBER  TERM,  2009 

Syllabus 

WOOD  v.  ALLEN,  COMMISSIONER,  ALABAMA
 
DEPARTMENT  OF  CORRECTIONS,  et al.
 

certiorari to the united states court of appeals for 
the eleventh circuit 

No. 08–9156.  Argued November 4, 2009—Decided January 20, 2010 

Under  28  U. S. C.  § 2254(d)(2),  a  federal  court  may  grant  a  state  prisoner 
habeas  relief  if  his  claim  was  adjudicated  on  the  merits  in  state  court 
and “resulted in a decision . . .  based on an unreasonable determination 
of the facts in light of the evidence presented in the State court proceed­
ing.”  Under § 2254(e)(1), “a determination of a factual issue made by a 
State  court  [is]  presumed  to  be  correct,”  and  the  petitioner  has  “the 
burden  of  rebutting  the  presumption  of  correctness  by  clear  and  con­
vincing evidence.” 

Petitioner  Wood  was  convicted  of  capital  murder  and  sentenced  to 
death  in  Alabama  state  court.  Two  of  his  court-appointed  attorneys, 
Dozier and Ralph, had signiﬁcant trial experience, but the third, Trotter, 
had  only  recently  been  admitted  to  the  bar.  After  exhausting  his  ap­
peals, Wood sought postconviction relief under Alabama Rule of Crimi­
nal  Procedure  32,  arguing,  among  other  things,  that  he  was  mentally 
retarded and not eligible for the death penalty, and that his trial counsel 
were ineffective because they failed to investigate and present evidence 
of his mental deﬁciencies during the trial’s penalty phase.  The Rule 32 
court conducted evidentiary hearings and denied the claims initially and 
on remand.  As to the mental retardation claim, it found that Wood had 
not  shown  deﬁcits  in  his  adaptive  functioning.  As  to  the  ineffective-
assistance-of-counsel claim, it concluded that he had not established that 
his counsel’s performance was deﬁcient or that any deﬁciency prejudiced 
his  defense.  In  so  doing,  it  made  a  factual  ﬁnding  that  counsel  had 
made a strategic decision not to pursue evidence of Wood’s alleged retar­
dation.  Observing  that  counsel  had  asked  Dr.  Kirkland  to  conduct  a 
mental  evaluation,  had  thoroughly  reviewed  his  report,  and  had  deter­
mined  that  no  further  investigation  was  warranted,  the  court  addition­
ally held that counsel appeared to have made a strategic decision not to 
present  their  limited  mental-deﬁciency  evidence  to  the  jury  because 
having  Dr.  Kirkland  testify  was  not  in  Wood’s  best  interest.  It  also 
found no reasonable probability of a different outcome had the evidence 
developed  in  the  Rule  32  proceedings  been  presented  at  trial.  Wood 
subsequently  sought  federal  habeas  relief  under  § 2254.  The  District 
Court  rejected  all  but  his  ineffective-assistance-of-counsel  claim.  The