Today’s New York Post contained a troubling story involving an a demonstrably false allegation of rape. Biurny Peguero Gonzalez repeatedly told police, prosecutors, the grand jury, and the petite jury that she had been raped by William McCaffrey. The jury believed Ms. Gonzalez and convicted the defendant. Mr.McCaffrey served more than four years in prison before exonerated by DNA test. At that point, Ms. Gonzalez coached on by her priest recanted her testimony and admitted she was never raped. What is sickening about the case is her underlying reason for the false allegation of sexual abuse. Ms. Gonzales was out with friends and temporarily left with the Mr. McCaffrey. Her friends were upset with her for leaving. In order to garner her sympathy, she invented the story that she was raped. At the original trial, she testified that she was 110% sure that the police have the right defendant and that he had raped her. Like many allegations of sexual abuse, the state had relied on her contemporaneous and distressed outburst over it to demonstrate that it was not a fabrication. While I recognize the danger of anecdotal evidence, the Gonzalez case demonstrates just how difficult it is to tell a genuine allegation of sexual abuse from a false one. It also paints a troubling picture about how easily some people won't make up such a damning lie. Click here to read the New York Post story.

Even under Wood’s reading of §2254(d)(2), the state court’s conclusion that his counsel made a strategic decision not to pursue or present evidence of his mental deficiencies was not an unreasonable determination of the facts in light of the evidence presented in the state-court proceedings. This Court need not reach the question whether §2254(e)(1) applies in every case presenting a challenge under §2254(d)(2), see Rice v. Collins, 546 U. S. 333, 339, because its view of the state court’s factual determination here does not depend on an interpretative difference regarding the relationship between those provisions. While “[t]he term ‘unreasonable’ is . . . difficult to define,” Williams v. Taylor, 529 U. S. 362, 410, it suffices to say that a state-court factual determination is not unreasonable merely because the federal habeas court would have reached a different conclusion in the first instance. See Rice, supra, at 341–342. Here, the state-court record shows that all of Wood’s counsel read the Kirkland report. Trotter testified that Dozier told him that nothing in the report merited further investigation, a recollection supported by the attorneys’ contemporaneous letters; and Trotter told the sentencing judge that counsel did not intend to introduce the report to the jury. This evidence can fairly be read to support the Rule 32 court’s factual determination that counsel’s failure to pursue or present evidence of Wood’s mental deficiencies was not mere oversight or neglect but the result of a deliberate decision to focus on other defenses. Most of the contrary evidence Wood highlights—e.g., that Dozier and Ralph put the inexperienced Trotter in charge of the penalty phase proceedings—speaks not to whether counsel made a strategic decision, but to whether counsel’s judgment was reasonable, a question not before this Court. Any evidence plausibly inconsistent with the strategic decision finding does not suffice to show that the finding was unreasonable. Pp. 8–12. Because Wood’s argument that the state court unreasonably applied Strickland in rejecting his ineffective-assistance claim on the merits is not “fairly included” in the questions presented under this Court’s Rule 14.1(a), it will not be addressed here. Pp. 12–13.