Habeas Corpus — recantation

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United States Court of Appeals

Criminal

Habeas Corpus — recantation

It was not unreasonable for state courts to find that a recantation by a witness was not credible.

“It was not against the clear and convincing weight of the evidence for the Illinois Supreme Court to reject Prater’s new account—even if it was a more ‘plausible version of events’—in favor of Prater’s original testimony, which, as the Illinois Supreme Court noted, ‘made sense too.’ Indeed, as the court correctly noted, ‘plausibility’ is not the test. Motley’s and Merkson’s history of violence merely provides support for another plausible scenario, the rejection of which is not objectively unreasonable. Again, we point out that ‘[a] decision is not objectively unreasonable unless it falls “well outside the boundaries of permissible differences of opinion.”’ Starkweather v. Smith, 574 F.3d 399, 402 (7th Cir. 2009) (quoting Hardaway v. Young, 302 F.3d 757, 762 (7th Cir. 2002)).”

Affirmed.

10-3155 Morgan v. Hardy

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Coar, J., Bauer, J.