STAHL, Circuit Judge.
Petitioner Lloyd Matthews was convicted in August 1987 in a Massachusetts trial court of rape, assault in a dwelling with intent to commit a felony, and indecent assault and battery. After exhausting his remedies in the state courts, Matthews sought a writ of habeas corpus in the district court pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2254, claiming that he was denied his Sixth Amendment right to effective assistance of counsel. After referring the matter to a magistrate-judge for a report and recommendation, the district court granted the petition, and this appeal followed. For the reasons discussed below, we reverse.
I.
BACKGROUND
A. Pretrial Events
On May 15, 1986, Brenda Barbosa, who was fourteen years old at the time, reported to Boston police that she had been attacked in her bedroom by a man with a knife earlier that morning. Later that same day, after viewing several hundred photographs in police identification books, Barbosa identified Matthews, who wears his hair in a distinctive “dreadlocks” style and was so depicted in the photograph, as the man who had attacked her. The police obtained an arrest warrant but, although they knew Matthews’s address, made no immediate attempt to question him about the incident or take him into custody. Matthews was eventually arrested on May 28, 1986, when a patrolling officer who hád stopped to question Matthews on the street about unrelated conduct discovered the outstanding warrant.
The incident report filed by the Boston police officer who first responded to Barbo-sa’s call (the “incident report”) contains no mention of a sexual assault. The officer’s account of his interview with Barbosa, conducted within two hocus of the incident, is as follows:
[T]he victim ... stated while she was sleeping the suspect entered the victim’s bedroom and jumped on top of her. The victim stated the suspect had a kitchen knife and told her, “Be quiet, I don’t want nothing from you, you won’t get hurt.” The victim further stated the suspect then pulled the victim from her bed and ordered the victim to stand in a corner then the [910]*910suspect ordered the victim to stand against a wall. The victim then stated the suspect started looking through the rooms on all three floors. The victim further stated the suspect then told the victim to close the door behind him when he left and not to tell anyone about him. The victim stated she complied and the suspect fled on foot to a yellow m/v then fled in an unknown direction.
The incident report includes a description of the alleged assailant as a black male, 5'10", black hair and brown eyes, wearing a black hat, brown leather jacket and black pants. It does not indicate whether Barbosa mentioned to the officer that her attacker had dreadlocks.
Matthews was initially charged with armed assault in a dwelling with intent to commit a felony, and with breaking and entering. A probable cause hearing was conducted in Roxbury District Court on August 4, 1986. There is no transcript of the hearing in the record. Although the breaking and entering charge was dropped following the hearing, Matthews was bound over on the armed assault charge. Subsequently, grand jury proceedings were initiated on that charge as well as two new charges apparently based on Barbosa’s testimony at the probable cause hearing: rape of a child with force, and indecent assault and battery on a person under 14. At the grand jury proceeding, Boston Police Detective William Ingersoll— who oversaw the photo identification procedure in which Barbosa picked out Matthews — testified as follows:
A. ... At the probable cause hearing in the Roxbury Court I was not present ... and I received a message following that hearing from the District Attorney who stated to me that during the probable cause hearing the victim — who was afraid to tell her mother and the police — that at the time during this breaking and entering and assault, the defendant did assault this young girl, again, 14 years of age.
Q. In what manner?
A. I believe it was placing the fingers to her vagina, more or less just the fingers. She did not go to the hospital to be examined. Again, she is a young Spanish girl and was ashamed even to tell the mother.
There was no complaints at that time for rape in the Roxbury District Court against him. I was unaware of this fact.
Barbosa also testified before the grand jury. Certain aspects of her account of the May 15 events were not entirely consistent with the second-hand version contained in the incident report:
A. Well, I was sleeping and I heard the bedroom door, and when I looked up I seen this man and he jumped on top of me and put me against the wall....
Q. Did he take anything?
A. The only thing I found missing was my leather coat, and stuff was in the first floor.
Q. Do you know whether he took that coat?
A. I don’t really know, but he must have took it because I couldn’t find it; I looked for it; I asked my sister if she let someone use it; she said, no.
Q. Now, when this man jumped on you, did he touch you in any way?
A. Yes.
Q. And what part of your body did he touch?
A. He touched me, all parts.
Q. You[r] chest and your vaginal area?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. Did he put his fingers into your vagina at some time?
A. Yes.
Q. When the police came that day, did you tell the police that day?
A. I told them everything that happened, like in a way I was — when I went to the police station to look at the pictures I told them what happened.
B. The Trial
On August 17, 1987, Matthews was brought to trial on the rape, armed assault and indecent assault charges. The prosecution called two witnesses, Barbosa and Inger-[911]*911soil, with Matthews as the only defense witness. Because we must evaluate the alleged constitutional deficiencies of counsel’s performance in light of his “overall performance throughout the case,” Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668, 689, 104 S.Ct. 2052, 2065, 80 L.Ed.2d 674 (1984), we provide an extensive summary of the trial record.
1. Opening Statements
In his opening statement, the prosecutor told the jury that immediately after Barbo-sa’s attacker left her apartment, Barbosa ran next door “and told her sister-in-law what had happened.” Despite strong evidence that Barbosa never told anyone that she had been sexually assaulted or raped until she testified at Matthews’s probable cause hearing, 81 days after the incident, Matthews’s trial counsel, Kenneth D’Arcy, did not challenge the prosecutor’s assertions. D’Arcy made clear from the outset that instead of challenging Barbosa’s allegations, he would try to show that she had mistakenly picked Matthews out of the police photograph books because of his distinctive “dreadlocks” hairstyle. D’Arcy told the jury that “[tjhere’s no question in my mind and Mr. Matthews’ mind that Brenda Barbosa was attacked in her bedroom on May 15th. But you’re going to hear from Mr. Matthews that on May 15th he was working in his father’s garage.”
2. Barbosa’s Testimony
Barbosa, who had reached sixteen years of age by the time of the trial, testified on direct examination that she was asleep in her bed about 8:30 a.m. on May 15, 1986, when she was awakened by a man entering her room. When she looked up, she saw the man had a knife. The man got on top of her, put the knife to her throat and told her to be quiet or he would kill her. The man touched Barbosa’s breasts and put his finger inside Barbosa’s vagina. Then, the man pulled Barbosa off the bed and placed her against a wall, telling her to stay there while he walked through other rooms of the house. Barbosa said he took her leather coat, although she did not say whether she saw him carry the coat away. Barbosa identified Matthews as the man who attacked her. The following exchange then ensued:
Q. You went to your sister-in-law’s; did you tell her what happened?
A. Yes.
Q. Did you call the police?
A. Yes, I did.
Q. You reported this to the police, didn’t you?
A. Yes.
Q. Now, at some point during the day did you have an opportunity to meet with Detective Ingersoll of the Boston Police?
A. Yes, I did.
Q. Did you go over what happened with him? Did you tell him about that?
A. Yes, I did.
Barbosa then testified as to how she picked Matthews’s photograph out of the police books. She said that she got a good look at her attacker’s face; that her attacker had long hair pinned up under a gray beret-like hat; and that she had described the man to police as being about five-foot-eleven with dreadlocks and a hat. Barbosa also testified that a few days after the attack, the same man came to her door and rang the doorbell. She said that she “went crazy, and ... started crying, and he just left.”
In his cross-examination, D’Arcy quickly began his attempt to show that Barbosa had immediately zeroed in on the fact that the assailant had dreadlocks:
Q. This man came in, and what’s the first thing you remember about his physical appearance when you saw him in your bedroom?
A. I don’t really understand what you mean.
Q. What was the first physical characteristic that you saw in this man when you saw him in the bedroom and he woke you up and you were afraid; what’s the first thing you recognized about him?
A. The knife.
Q. And then what about a physical characteristic? After you saw the knife, and you saw this man with the knife, what physical characteristic did you remember?
[912]*912A. I still don’t understand what you mean.
Q. When you describe people—
A. Yes.
Q. —you describe people as short—
A. Oh, you want me to describe him, like when he first came in?
Q. Yes, when you first saw this man and you saw the knife, and you got over the shock of the knife, and you saw that this man was in your bedroom and he didn’t belong there—
A. Yes.
Q. —what physical characteristic of this man did you first remember — first remember?
A. The way he looked, his face, and the way he was like coming towards me.
Q. What about his hair style?
A. I recognized that too.
Q. The dreadlocks?
A. Yes.
D’Arcy then questioned Barbosa about her identification of Matthews as her attacker. He elicited the not-too-helpful testimony that she had seen other people with dreadlocks before encountering Matthews, but that they did not look like him; that she identified Matthews the same day as the alleged attack; that she “could never forget his face”; and that she had picked the picture out after viewing it for just half a second. Before he concluded this line of questioning, D’Arcy inartfully allowed Barbosa one more opportunity to tell the jury how certain she was of her identification of Matthews:
Q. There’s no question in your mind that this is the man that broke into your house and had a knife in his hand?
A. That’s the man.
At that point, D’Arcy changed the focus of his examination and began to question Bar-bosa’s account of what had happened and her veracity:
Q. Then did you tell Detective Ingersoll at that time, you know, that he touched your private parts at all?
A. I told him what had happened.
Q. Well, did you tell him, you know, as you told the jury today, that the man grabbed your private parts?
A. I only told him what he was asking me.
Q. Is it fair to say, Brenda, that you really didn’t tell Detective Ingersoll everything that happened when you were going over the pictures?
A. I told him most everything that happened.
Q. But you didn’t tell him about the fact that this man touched your private parts?
A. No, but I told the other cops when they came.
Q. When?
A. When it first happened, the cops that came over to the house. It’s right in the report.
Q. You told them that he had grabbed you?
A. Yes.
Q. And touched your private parts, right?
A. Yes.
Although these last four answers were apparently untrue, D’Arcy did not directly confront Barbosa with any prior statements or other evidence contradicting her testimony.
3. Ingersoll’s Testimony
Ingersoll testified that Barbosa and her sister-in-law, Carmen Barbosa, came to his office on the afternoon of May 15 to view photographs. Ingersoll said he “tried to determine what exactly had happened” and then began showing Barbosa books containing photographs of black men of the approximate age that Barbosa had described. In-gersoll testified that, in his estimation, Bar-bosa viewed “about 600, 700 photographs.” When she turned to the photograph of Matthews, Ingersoll said, Barbosa “became very excited. ‘That’s him.’ She got up from the table, jumping up and down. ‘That’s him, that’s him.’ ” Ingersoll said that the picture of Matthews matched the general description contained in the original incident report, and that during her conversation with Ingersoll prior to viewing the photographs, Barbosa had mentioned that the attacker had dreadlocks.
[913]*913On cross-examination, D’Arcy resumed his strategy of trying to show that Barbosa had picked out Matthews’s picture because of his dreadlocks:
Q. Now, when Brenda Barbosa came in the station, she gave you a description of the man that was in her home earlier, had dreadlocks; do you remember?
A. That’s correct.
Q. You don’t have any books or just males with dreadlocks, though; right?
A. No, sir. The space just doesn’t allow it.
Q. Did you look at any of the photos that she looked at, looking for men with dreadlocks?
A. Not at that particular time, no, sir. I basically put a lot of the photographs in the books when we receive them for identification. I don’t make a special notice of dreadlocks.
Q. Do you know how many men had dreadlocks in the photos before Miss Bar-bosa picked Lloyd Matthews’ picture?
A. I have no idea.
Q. It could have been any of them?
A. It could have been any, could have been a few, could have been one. I don’t know.
Q. Could have been one, right?
A. The books are set up, Mr. D’Arcy, only by age, sex and race; that’s it.
Q. So you’re testifying today that Mr. Matthews could have been the first male that had dreadlocks in those photo books; correct, Detective?
A. Could have been.
Upon further questioning by D’Arcy, Inger-soll testified that he “kn[e]w for a fact that there are many dreadlocks” in the photograph books, and that he had “had every confidence in the world that she would run into dreadlocks.” He also testified that he did not personally arrest Matthews, nor did he immediately have police officers go to Matthews’s home to arrest him once an arrest warrant issued. Instead, Ingersoll said, he told another police officer with duty in Matthews’s neighborhood of the warrant, and that officer told Ingersoll “that he would lock him up when he sees him.” Matthews was ultimately arrested when police stopped to question him on a Roxbury street on May 28, nine days after the warrant had issued and thirteen days after the crimes allegedly took place.
A The Defense
After the prosecution rested, D’Arcy notified the court that Matthews was “very upset” with D’Arcy for not wanting to recall Barbosa to the stand to question her about discrepancies between her trial testimony and prior statements. D’Arey told the court:
But in my perusal of the grand jury minutes, I mean — you know, this is an identity type of case, your Honor. I know what the girl has been through. It’s obvious that a crime was committed. My client’s defense is that it’s a misidentity. She testified there was no question in her mind it was him.
Whether she came downstairs with him or looked out the window, there’s sort of minor discrepancies as far as I’m concerned.
It’s a disadvantage when you try to examine young ladies because of the fact that she’s highly emotional. I just feel — I disagree with my client. I told him I didn’t want to recall Brenda Barbosa. You know, the bottom line is that I’m trying the case and he isn’t.
But I just want the record to reflect that, you know, he’s been more than vociferous that he doesn’t agree with my strategy, shall we say.
D’Arcy then called Matthews to the stand. Matthews testified that he had worked at his “father” John Wornum’s1 auto body shop in Roxbury on and off for years. From April until July of 1986, Matthews testified, he and a friend, Chris Cross, were rebuilding a junked car that they eventually sold to a friend of Wornum. Matthews could not say [914]*914specifically that he was working at the shop on the morning of May 15, 1986, but he said that it was his usual practice to open up the shop each morning at 7:30 a.m.
On cross-examination, Matthews explained that he was paid in cash and had no records or pay stubs proving that he worked at the body shop. John Wornum, Matthews testified, had been in Georgia for several months; Wornum’s son, Rufus Wornum, was busy running the shop, and Chris Cross had agreed to testify on his behalf but had since joined the Marines. Matthews also testified that he had no records pertaining to the rebuilt car, and that he did not know the person who bought it other than that he was a friend of John Wornum. The prosecutor’s final exchange with Matthews was as follows:
Q. You’re not specifically testifying as to where you were on the morning of May 15th, 1986; are you?
A. No, sir.
5. Closing Arguments
Unlike his opening, D’Arcy’s summation contained at least some hints to the jury that perhaps Barbosa’s story of what happened to her was not entirely truthful. After incorrectly telling the jury that they had “seen a girl fourteen years old,” D’Arcy urged the jurors not to let their emotions affect their deliberations about
what happened to this girl, if in fact it did happen....
You have to decide did Brenda Barbosa really tell the truth of everything that happened. Did she wake up and see a fellow there with a knife? Was it somebody maybe she — she didn’t go to school that day — that maybe a fellow that she was going to go to school with — maybe something got carried on that she didn’t expect and she panicked, because she lived right — a relative lived right around the corner.
Did it happen to her? Did she tell Officer Ingersoll that she had been sexually assaulted?
D’Arcy did not, however, point to any evidence or prior statements suggesting that Barbosa was not truthful. Instead, he discussed at length how a “hysterical” Barbosa had zeroed in on Matthews’s photograph “[a]s soon as she saw the dreadlocks,” and how the failure of the police to arrest Matthews as soon as Barbosa had identified him was not “fair play.” The near-two-week delay in Matthews’s arrest left Matthews virtually no chance to prove that he was at the body shop while Barbosa allegedly was attacked, D’Arcy argued.
Toward the end of his argument, D’Arcy again suggested that this was not just a case of mistaken identity, but also of truthfulness:
Did you hear any hospital testimony regarding any physical disability with Brenda Barbosa? Because I suggest she didn’t tell anybody the day she picked out Mr. Matthews’ picture.
Did you hear any evidence of a lock being broken or of any damage to her house that allowed this stranger to come in? No.
And again:
Ladies and gentlemen, I suggest that all of these gaps create some doubt, and that’s the magic word, “doubt”, beyond a reasonable doubt. That’s what you have to be convinced, that Lloyd Matthews was the individual that came into a room, and if in fact there was a breaking and entering, and indecently assaulted Brenda Barbosa, if in fact she was, and stuck his finger in her vagina, if in fact that was done.
Because I suggest a fourteen year old that this has really happened to, when she went running out to her relation, she would have said, “I’ve been violated,” and she would have been brought right to the hospital for examination.
You know, fourteen years old, if this is what happened. Then from the hospital the police would have got up there, and then maybe if she had told all the truth right away they would have picked up or investigated Lloyd Matthews that day.
Had that occurred, D’Arcy argued, Matthews could have proved where he was the morning of May 15 and refuted the notion that he was the dreadloeked man who had attacked Bar-bosa.
[915]*915The prosecutor recounted how certain Bar-bosa was of her identification and the substantial opportunity she had had to see him when he entered her room and was on top of her. He told the jury to consider “the sincerity of her emotions” in testifying:
Keep that picture of her in your mind. Those were not crocodile tears that came out of her eyes. Those were genuine tears based on honesty and certainty.
Brenda Barbosa came to this court to seek justice, and you can give her justice. She is the victim.
In contrast to Barbosa’s sincerity, the prosecutor pointed to the “vague” nature of Matthews’s testimony: “That he worked at a vague garage, working on a vague Lincoln, making vague repairs. Nothing to back it up.” In the end, the prosecutor said, the issue for the jury was one of credibility: ‘"You have to make a' determination of who to believe; who was honest; who was sincere; who was certain; and who was vague.”
The jury deliberated for about four-and-one-half hours before returning verdicts of guilty on all three counts. Matthews was sentenced to concurrent state prison terms of 12 to 20 years, 10 to 15 years, and 4 to 5 years.
C. Postr-Conviction Proceedings
Matthews moved for a new trial on a number of grounds, including ineffective assistance of counsel and newly discovered evidence — namely, an affidavit from John Wor-num to the effect that he would corroborate Matthews’s testimony that in May 1986, he normally opened the body shop at 7:30 in the morning, and that on May 15, 1986, Matthews “would have been working” at the shop when Barbosa was allegedly attacked. The trial court denied the motion. The Massachusetts Appeals Court affirmed the conviction, and the Supreme Judicial Court denied Matthews’s petition to obtain further appellate review. ■
Having exhausted his state remedies, Matthews filed his petition for habeas corpus in the district court on August 30, 1990. Matthews argued that D’Arey committed numerous errors that deprived him of effective assistance of counsel: 1) failure to impeach Brenda Barbosa with her prior inconsistent statements; 2) failure to make an effective closing argument; 3) failure to have Matthews’s only alibi witness, John Wornum, appear and testify at trial; and 4) failure to prepare adequately for trial and to object to improper leading questions and to the prosecutor’s closing argument. The respondent argued that D’Arcy’s alleged “errors” were tactical or strategic choices made so as not to undermine D’Arcy’s strategy of pursuing the “dreadlocks” defense.
An evidentiary hearing was convened on January 15, 1993, but neither party chose to present evidence beyond that already contained in the record. On March 17, 1993, a United States Magistrate Judge agreed with virtually all of Matthews’s assertions and, finding that “the culmination of errors taken as a whole ... establishes trial counsel’s ineffective assistance in this case,” recommended that the writ be allowed.
The district court adopted the magistrate-judge’s recommended result but not her reasoning. The court found that D’Arcy had adopted a professionally responsible strategy by not contesting that Barbosa was sexually assaulted by a black man with dreadlocks and by seeking instead to suggest that, in her subsequent hysteria, she mistakenly selected Matthews’s photograph because his was the first picture of a man with dreadlocks. The court held that because D’Arcy relied on the mistaken-identity defense, however, his failure to investigate Matthews’s only alibi witness, John Wornum, or to seek a continuance in order to do so, was not ascribable to any strategic reason and therefore constituted constitutionally deficient assistance of counsel that prejudiced Matthews.
The respondent appealed, arguing that Wornum’s affidavit contained no indication that his testimony would provide an alibi for Matthews. Matthews filed two briefs pro se, one as appellee urging that we affirm the district court’s order, and another as appellant asking that we grant the petition on the grounds recommended by the magistrate-judge but rejected by the district court.
[916]*916
II.
DISCUSSION
A. Governing Principles
To establish a Sixth Amendment violation of the right to effective assistance of counsel, a defendant must show: (1) that counsel’s performance fell below an objective standard of reasonableness; and (2) that prejudice resulted. Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668, 687-88, 104 S.Ct. 2052, 2064, 80 L.Ed.2d 674 (1984); Scarpa v. Dubois, 38 F.3d 1, 8 (1st Cir.1994), cert. denied, — U.S. —, 115 S.Ct. 940, 130 L.Ed.2d 885 (1995). Among the basic duties of an attorney is “to bring to bear such skill and knowledge as will render the trial a reliable adversarial testing process.” Strickland, 466 U.S. at 688, 104 S.Ct. at 2065.
In evaluating the reasonableness of an attorney’s performance, we “indulge a strong presumption that counsel’s conduct falls within the wide range of reasonable professional assistance; that is, the defendant must overcome the presumption that, under the circumstances, the challenged action ‘might be considered sound trial strategy.’ ” Id. at 689, 104 S.Ct. at 2065 (quoting Michel v. Louisiana, 350 U.S. 91, 101, 76 S.Ct. 158, 164, 100 L.Ed. 83 (1955)). We must make “every effort ... to eliminate the distorting effects of hindsight” and to evaluate counsel’s conduct from his or her perspective under the circumstances as they existed at that time'. Id.
We say that a defendant was prejudiced by his lawyer’s substandard performance if he can show that, but for counsel’s errors, “there is a reasonable probability ... that the result of the proceeding would have been different. A reasonable probability is a probability sufficient to undermine confidence in the outcome.”2 Id. at 694, 104 S.Ct. at 2068. See also Scarpa, 38 F.3d at 8. “In making this determination, a court ... must consider the totality of the evidence before the judge or jury.” Strickland, 466 U.S. at 695, 104 S.Ct. at 2069. As “both the performance and prejudice components of the ineffectiveness inquiry are mixed questions of law and fact,” id. at 698, 104 S.Ct. at 2070, we review these issues de novo. Scarpa, 38 F.3d at 9.
B. D’Arcy’s Performance
Matthews concedes that the central issue in the case was the identity of the attacker. What he challenges is D’Arcy’s decision to use the “dreadlocks” defense to attempt to persuade the jury that Barbosa had misidentified Matthews, rather than focusing on the apparent inconsistencies of her prior statements and her failure to report the alleged rape immediately. D’Arcy’s decision to employ the dreadlocks strategy was not a professionally reasonable choice, Matthews claims, because D’Arcy possessed no evidence that Barbosa had picked Matthews’s photograph out because of his hairstyle. D’Arcy had no knowledge of how many pictures of men with dreadlocks Barbosa had seen before identifying Matthews, and the police report contains no indication that Bar-bosa had mentioned dreadlocks in her initial description of the attacker, thus undermining the argument that the hairstyle was the predominant feature. Therefore, Matthews argues, instead of concealing the fact that Bar-bosa did not mention dreadlocks initially, D’Arcy should have driven this point home to the jury and called into question Barbosa’s powers of observation. Furthermore, Matthews maintains, D’Arcy should have questioned Barbosa about the discrepancy between the police report’s version of when she initially saw her attacker, and her own testimony — i.e., whether she was awakened by a man entering her bedroom and jumping on top of her, or whether she heard the door, and thus had a longer time to view her attacker — and he should have called into question Barbosa’s truthfulness generally by impeaching her regarding her delay in re[917]*917porting the alleged rape. Finally, Matthews argues, D’Arcy should have marshalled an effective closing argument underscoring the inconsistencies in Barbosa’s prior statements, rather than delivering a disjointed speech that, Matthews claims, bordered on an invitation to convict.
We disagree that D’Arcy’s strategic choice to employ the “dreadlocks defense” was professionally unreasonable. That it was not ultimately a winning strategy is of no moment in assessing its reasonableness at the time, see United States v. Natanel, 938 F.2d 302, 310 (1st Cir.1991), cert. denied, 502 U.S. 1079, 112 S.Ct. 986, 117 L.Ed.2d 148 (1992). D’Arcy had little to work with, given the persuasive power of Barbosa’s identification testimony and the inherent weakness of Matthews’s alibi, and he chose what he thought was a reasonable line of argument that carried with it little risk of alienating the jury. A strategic choice that would have included more direct attacks on Barbosa’s credibility and, inevitably, her character, would have carried with it a far greater risk of offending the jury. Thus, we hold that, in choosing to emphasize Matthews’s dreadlocks as the reason that Barbosa identified him as her attacker, rather than highlighting alleged inconsistencies in Barbosa’s trial testimony and her prior statements, D’Arcy employed a professionally reasonable strategy and did not, by virtue of that choice alone, deprive Matthews of effective assistance of counsel.
Matthews also argues, however, that D’Arcy did in fact challenge Barbosa’s credibility — by questioning her about her apparent failure to report immediately that she was raped, and by arguing this point to the jury — and that therefore D’Arcy’s failure to impeach Barbosa more directly, or at least to introduce the impeaching evidence through another witness, cannot be deemed a strategic choice. We agree that the record makes clear that D’Arcy did attempt to elicit from Barbosa an admission that she did not immediately report the rape. Indeed, D’Arcy successfully forced Barbosa to change her testimony and admit that she had not, in fact, told Detective Ingersoll about the rape. The question we . must address, however, is whether, once Barbosa went on to testify that she had told the police who had initially responded to her call that she was i’aped, and that “it’s right in the report,” D’Arcy’s failure to demonstrate to the jury that these statements were apparently untrue constitutes ineffective assistance of counsel. Put another way, the issue is whether it may be considered acceptable trial strategy to have questioned Barbosa about her delay in reporting the rape without impeaching her when the answers she gave were not favorable to Matthews.
Bearing in mind that the defendant must overcome “a strong presumption” that D’Arcy’s conduct “falls within the wide range of reasonable professional assistance,” Strickland, 466 U.S. at 689, 104 S.Ct. at 2065, we are unable to come to any conclusion other than that Matthews has not done so here. To be sure, there were points to be scored against Barbosa’s credibility after she insisted that she had in fact immediately told police that she had been raped. D’Arcy could have confronted her with the incident report containing no mention of a rape, or he could have asked her about her testimony at the probable cause hearing. He also could have questioned Ingersoll about when he first learned that Barbosa claimed to have been raped. But, as D’Arcy made clear to the trial judge at a sidebar conference following the close of the prosecution’s ease, Matthews’s primary defense remained that Bar-bosa had picked out the wrong assailant, and not that she had not been attacked at all. While Barbosa’s delay in reporting that she was raped might have affected the jury’s assessment of her overall credibility as a witness, we think this would be much more likely if the primary issue had been consent. Here, the primary issue, and the heart of the defense’s theory, was not whether a crime occurred but rather who committed it. Moreover, the record makes apparent that Barbosa was quite obviously upset on the witness stand as she retold her experience; this circumstance, along with Barbosa’s youth (rendering her failure to report a rape immediately all the more explicable), diminishes the likelihood that the jury would doubt that such an attack occurred simply because [918]*918Barbosa delayed in reporting it. D’Arcy had to balance the limited evidentiary value of Barbosa’s delay against the danger of the jury misperceiving an impeachment attempt as badgering or callously tarnishing Barbosa. Another lawyer might have struck a different balance, but we do not find that D’Arcy’s on-the-spot decision to let Barbosa’s answer stand and argue the inference he had raised to the jury was “beyond the wide range of reasonable professional assistance.”3
The other alleged inconsistencies in Barbosa’s statements that Matthews claims D’Arcy should have raised are trivial, and thus D’Arcy’s decision not to question Barbo-sa about them was a sound tactical choice. That the incident report, prepared immediately after the attack, contains no mention of dreadlocks, is inconsequential in light of the fact that Barbosa told Ingersoll before viewing any photographs that her attacker had dreadlocks. Furthermore, to point out this “inconsistency” would have only weakened D’Arcy’s argument that it was the dreadlocks that had in fact caused Barbosa to pick Matthews’s picture out of the photograph books. As for the “inconsistency” between when Barbosa initially told police she was awakened and her testimony in court, we note that the incident report’s statement that “while [Barbosa] was sleeping the suspect entered the victim’s bedroom and jumped on top of her” is a hearsay account of what Barbosa said immediately after the attack, and, even if true, would only have deprived her of a few seconds of the time she claimed to have viewed her attacker. She still was able to view him while he was on top of her; at various times while he searched the apartment; and when he returned to Barbosa’s home on the weekend. Thus, D’Arcy’s decision to eschew questioning on these matters was a sound trial tactic.
Finally, we address the grounds on which the district court actually granted the writ: D’Arey’s failure to call John Wornum, or to request a continuance so that he could do so. Here, we disagree with the district court’s conclusion; we cannot see how Matthews was prejudiced. Wornum’s testimony would have corroborated Matthews’s testimony in general — i.e., that there actually was a Crossing Auto Body Shop, and that Matthews actually worked there, and perhaps even that he generally opened the shop early in the morning — which would have taken some of the wind out of the sails of the prosecutor’s closing argument, in which he cast doubt on the entirety of Matthews’s testimony. Wornum’s affidavit makes clear, however, that he could not provide an alibi for Matthews on the particular day of the crime. Matthews argues that Wornum’s testimony is all the more credible because he does not pretend to be able to say for sure where Matthews was on a particular morning several years ago. That may be true, but it is far less probative of Matthews’s innocence. Moreover, a jury might have drawn a nega[919]*919tive inference from the things that Wornum’s affidavit does not indicate he is willing to testify to: namely, the identity of the purchaser of the car Matthews says he was rebuilding around the time of the crime, or any other information regarding the car’s purchase and sale. Thus, while Womum’s testimony might have been, on balance, of marginal utility to Matthews, his affidavit does not create in us any belief that there is a reasonable probability that the outcome would have been different had he testified.4
III.
CONCLUSION
For the foregoing reasons, we conclude that Matthews was not deprived of his Sixth Amendment right to effective assistance of counsel, and the decision of the district court is
Reversed.