Death Row Inmate Denied Habeas for Ineffective Assistance

A Tennessee man sentenced to death after being convicted for raping and murdering a child lost his bid for resentencing or a new trial after a federal appeals court affirmed the denial of his habeas petition.

The state court didn’t act unreasonably in finding William Rogers wasn’t prejudiced by his counsel’s failure to challenge the sexual assault evidence, the en banc US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit ruled in an opinion by Judge Amul R. Thapar.

To show prejudice, Rogers would have had to “undermine confidence in the jury’s sentence of death,” the court said. Rogers admitted to ...