Rios v. Warden, Perry Corr Inst

Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit.

PAMELA HARRIS, Circuit Judge:

A jury convicted Santiago Rios of murdering his wife, Eliza Hernandez, on Thanksgiving night in 2006. Now serving a 30-year prison sentence in South Carolina, Rios appeals from a district court order denying his petition for a writ of habeas corpus under 28 U.S.C. § 2254. Rios’s claim is that his trial counsel provided ineffective assistance by abandoning a request for a jury instruction on self-defense. South Carolina’s post-conviction relief court rejected that claim under Strickland v. Washington,…