Full Opinion

USCA11 Case: 25-12556 Document: 28-1 Date Filed: 11/10/2026 Page: 1 of 8 NOT FOR PUBLICATION In the United States Court of Appeals For the Eleventh Circuit ____________________ No. 25-12556 Non-Argument Calendar ____________________ EVERETT SMITH, Petitioner-Appellant, versus WARDEN, DOOLY SP, Respondent-Appellee. ____________________ Appeal from the United States District Court for the Middle District of Georgia D.C. Docket No. 5:24-cv-00048-CAR-CHW ____________________ Before NEWSOM, GRANT, and MARCUS, Circuit Judges. PER CURIAM: Everett Smith appeals from the district court’s denial of his pro se 28 U.S.C. § 2254 petition. On appeal, Smith argues that the USCA11 Case: 25-12556 Document: 28-1 Date Filed: 11/10/2026 Page: 2 of 8 2 Opinion of the Court 25-12556 state court rendered a decision that was contrary to, or an unrea- sonable application of, Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668, 687 (1984), because he demonstrated that he was deprived of effective assistance of counsel due to trial counsel’s (1) decision to interrupt his testimony at trial; (2) decision not to call his mother and sister as witnesses; and (3) failure to timely subpoena and call a Georgia Division of Family & Children Services (“DFCS”) employee. After careful review, we affirm. We review de novo the district court’s denial of a habeas corpus petition. McNair v. Campbell, 416 F.3d 1291, 1297 (11th Cir. 2005). The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (“AEDPA”) imposes a “highly deferential standard for evaluating state-court rulings and demands that state-court decisions be given the benefit of the doubt.” Renico v. Lett, 559 U.S. 766, 773 (2010) (citation modified). Thus, while we review the district court’s de- cision de novo, we review the state court’s decision with deference. Reed v. Sec’y, Fla. Dep’t of Corrs., 593 F.3d 1217, 1239 (11th Cir. 2010). A federal court cannot grant habeas relief on a claim that was “adjudicated on the merits in State court proceedings” unless the state court’s decision was (1) “contrary to, or involved an unrea- sonable application of, clearly established Federal law, as deter- mined by the Supreme Court of the United States,” or (2) “based on an unreasonable determination of the facts in light of the evi- dence presented in the State court proceeding.” 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d). A federal habeas court making the unreasonable applica- tion inquiry “should ask whether the state court’s application of USCA11 Case: 25-12556 Document: 28-1 Date Filed: 11/10/2026 Page: 3 of 8 25-12556 Opinion of the Court 3 clearly established federal law was objectively unreasonable.” Wil- liams v. Taylor, 529 U.S. 362, 409 (2000). “[A] federal habeas court may not issue the writ simply because that court concludes in its independent judgment that the state-court decision applied Strick- land incorrectly.” Woodford v. Visciotti, 537 U.S. 19, 24–25 (2002). Even if the federal court concludes that the state court applied fed- eral law incorrectly, relief is appropriate only if that application also is objectively unreasonable. Bell v. Cone, 535 U.S. 685, 694 (2002). “A state court’s decision is reasonable so long as fairminded jurists could disagree on the correctness of the state court’s decision.” Jen- kins v. Comm’r, Ala. Dep’t of Corrs., 963 F.3d 1248, 1263 (11th Cir. 2020) (citation modified). In applying AEDPA deference, a federal court’s first step is to identify the highest state-court decision that evaluated the claim on its merits. Marshall v. Sec’y, Fla. Dep’t of Corrs., 828 F.3d 1277, 1285 (11th Cir. 2016). Where a state court rejects a petitioner’s claim and provides an explanation, the federal habeas court re- views only the state court’s decision and “is not limited to the par- ticular justifications that the state court supplied.” Pye v. Warden, Ga. Diagnostic Prison, 50 F.4th 1025, 1037–38 (11th Cir. 2022). In Strickland, the Supreme Court established a two-pronged standard for the evaluation of claims that a defendant received in- effective assistance of counsel. 466 U.S. at 687. First, a defendant must show that “counsel’s performance was deficient,” which “re- quires showing that counsel made errors so serious that counsel was not functioning as the ‘counsel’ guaranteed the defendant by USCA11 Case: 25-12556 Document: 28-1 Date Filed: 11/10/2026 Page: 4 of 8 4 Opinion of the Court 25-12556 the Sixth Amendment.” Id. Second, the defendant must show prej- udice. Id. The petitioner bears the burden of showing both prongs. Cullen v. Pinholster, 563 U.S. 170, 189 (2011). “[T]he proper standard for attorney performance is that of reasonably effective assistance,” and a court’s “scrutiny of counsel’s performance must be highly deferential.” Strickland, 466 U.S. at 687, 689. “Thus, a court deciding an actual ineffectiveness claim must judge the reasonableness of counsel’s challenged conduct on the facts of the particular case, viewed as of the time of counsel’s conduct.” Id. at 690. Counsel is strongly presumed to have pro- vided effective assistance through the exercise of reasonable pro- fessional judgment, and a defendant must overcome that presump- tion by demonstrating that counsel acted unreasonably under the circumstances. Cullen, 563 U.S. at 189. As for an attorney’s strategy during trial, “strategic choices made after thorough investigation of law and facts relevant to plausible options are virtually unchal- lengeable,” while “strategic choices made after less than complete investigation are reasonable precisely to the extent that reasonable professional judgments support the limitations on investigation.” Strickland, 466 U.S. at 690–91. Further, a “defendant’s own state- ments or actions” may influence the reasonableness of his attor- ney’s actions. Id. at 691. In Waters v. Thomas, we noted that “the cases in which ha- beas petitioners can properly prevail on the ground of ineffective assistance of counsel are few and far between.” 46 F.3d 1506, 1511 (11th Cir. 1995) (citation modified). We said that we begin “any USCA11 Case: 25-12556 Document: 28-1 Date Filed: 11/10/2026 Page: 5 of 8 25-12556 Opinion of the Court 5 ineffective assistance inquiry with a strong presumption that coun- sel’s conduct falls within the wide range of reasonable professional assistance.” Id. at 1511–12 (citation modified). The question thus is “whether some reasonable attorney could have acted as these attorneys did in the circumstances of this trial.” Id. at 1512. “[T]he tactical choice” of “[w]hich witnesses, if any, to call, and when to call them, is the epitome of a strategic decision, and it is one that we will seldom, if ever, second guess.” Id. As for the Strickland prejudice prong, it “requires showing that counsel’s errors were so serious as to deprive the defendant of a fair trial, a trial whose result is reliable.” Strickland, 466 U.S. at 687. This means that, presuming “that the judge or jury acted ac- cording to law,” there exists “a reasonable probability that, but for counsel’s unprofessional errors, the result of the proceeding would have been different.” Id. at 694. “A reasonable probability is a probability sufficient to undermine confidence in the outcome.” Id. Overall, the Strickland “standard for judging the perfor- mance of counsel is a most deferential one.” Johnson v. Sec’y, DOC, 643 F.3d 907, 910 (11th Cir. 2011) (citation modified). “When com- bined with the extra layer of deference that § 2254 provides, the result is double deference and the question becomes whether there is any reasonable argument that counsel satisfied Strickland’s defer- ential standard.” Id. at 910–11 (citation modified). USCA11 Case: 25-12556 Document: 28-1 Date Filed: 11/10/2026 Page: 6 of 8 6 Opinion of the Court 25-12556 Smith’s § 2254 petition arose out of his state court sentence of life imprisonment, following his convictions for aggravated sex- ual battery and child molestation. In support of the ineffective as- sistance of counsel claims Smith brought in his § 2254 petition, he argues that his attorney improperly cut off his response to a ques- tion about whether he touched the victim inappropriately and re- quired him to answer either “yes” or “no,” which deprived him of the ability to prove his actual innocence by explaining that he was putting medicine on her pelvic area. Smith adds that his attorney improperly failed to call as witnesses his mother and sister, who would have testified that the victim suffered from rashes in her pel- vic area requiring the application of topical medication. Smith also cites his attorney’s failure to subpoena an employee of Georgia’s DFCS, who would have testified favorably on his behalf on the is- sue of whether the molestation was internal. However, Smith has not demonstrated that his trial attor- ney’s conduct constituted ineffective assistance of counsel, much less that the state appellate court’s application of Strickland was “contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal law.” 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d). For starters, coun- sel’s decision to interrupt Smith’s testimony was, as counsel testi- fied, a strategic choice intended to limit the potential damage of Smith’s testimony. And because this was a strategic decision, it is “virtually unchallengeable.” Strickland, 466 U.S. at 690. This is es- pecially the case since Smith failed to attend a scheduled meeting USCA11 Case: 25-12556 Document: 28-1 Date Filed: 11/10/2026 Page: 7 of 8 25-12556 Opinion of the Court 7 with counsel before trial and since he was giving “highly emo- tional” testimony, making it reasonable for counsel to attempt to mitigate the potential harm of Smith’s choice to testify. Id. at 691. In any event, even if counsel’s choice to truncate Smith’s tes- timony was unreasonable, he has not shown prejudice. The victim testified that Smith touched her inside her vagina and never men- tioned that he applied medication or that she had rashes on her pel- vic area. On this record, we cannot say that there is reasonable probability that permitting Smith to testify that he only touched the victim to apply medication would have led to a more favorable result. Id. Nor has Smith shown that counsel’s decision not to call his mother and sister as witnesses was outside the realm of profes- sional judgment. At the motion for a new trial hearing, notably after the trial, Smith’s sister confirmed that the victim experienced irritation in her pelvic area, but she testified that she never had seen Smith apply any topical medication to that area. And while Smith’s mother testified at the post-trial hearing that she had seen Smith apply cream with a cotton swab, Smith’s attorney said that she did not recall Smith having told her that his mother had any knowledge of this. In any event, regardless of whether this decision was defi- cient, it was not prejudicial. The victim’s pediatrician had no rec- ord of the victim ever suffering from rashes in the pelvic region. Moreover, the victim herself testified that Smith put his finger in her vagina, contradicting his claim that he touched her only exter- nally and with innocent intent. Smith, therefore, has not shown USCA11 Case: 25-12556 Document: 28-1 Date Filed: 11/10/2026 Page: 8 of 8 8 Opinion of the Court 25-12556 that this testimony would have led to the reasonable probability of a different result. As for counsel’s failure to timely subpoena and call the DFCS employee, it appears that counsel did not attempt to sub- poena the employee until trial had already begun. But again, Smith has not shown that this delay was prejudicial. For one thing, the employee’s testimony that the victim’s hymen was intact would have only been a reiteration of information already provided by the pediatrician. Further, the employee’s testimony that the victim could not tell between good and bad touches would have been con- tradicted by the victim’s testimony that she had been touched “in a bad way” and that the touch hurt and made her feel “[b]ad.” Thus, Smith has not demonstrated how or why the employee’s tes- timony may have led to the reasonable probability of a different result. In short, Smith has not shown that he received ineffective assistance of counsel at trial, nor has he shown that the state appel- late court applied Strickland in an objectively unreasonable man- ner. The district court therefore did not err by denying his § 2254 petition, and we affirm. AFFIRMED.