Hughes

Summary

The United States District Court for the Middle District of Alabama dismisses Charles Bryant Hughes, Jr.’s 28 U.S.C. § 2254 habeas petition as untimely under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act. The court concludes that Hughes failed to establish equitable tolling or a gateway claim of actual innocence sufficient to overcome the statute of limitations. The opinion discusses Hughes’s claim that trial counsel prevented him from testifying that the charged sexual conduct was consensual and finds that the trial evidence was sufficiently compelling that reasonable jurors would still have found him guilty.