Clausell v. Sherrer

OPINION

GARTH, Circuit Judge:

Appellant James Douglas Clausell appeals for a new trial from the order of the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey which denied his 28 U.S.C. § 2254 petition for writ of habeas corpus. Clausell claims that his counsel was constitutionally ineffective in failing to object to the prosecutor’s peremptory challenges to Afro-American and/or Hispanic venirepersons. We will affirm.

I

On October 31, 1984, the Burlington County Grand Jury indicted Clausell for first degree capital murder of Edward Louis Atwood.1 At the ensuing trial, a jury convicted…