Gerardo Preciado v. William Munez ( 2019 )

FILED
NOT FOR PUBLICATION
OCT 10 2019
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK
U.S. COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT
GERARDO PRECIADO, No. 18-55326
Petitioner-Appellant, D.C. No.
2:16-cv-01886-FMO-JDE
v.
WILLIAM MUNEZ, Warden, MEMORANDUM*
Respondent-Appellee.
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Central District of California
Fernando M. Olguin, District Judge, Presiding
Argued and Submitted April 9, 2019
Pasadena, California
Before: RAWLINSON and MURGUIA, Circuit Judges, and RAKOFF,** District
Judge.
Petitioner Gerardo Preciado (Petitioner) appeals the district court’s denial of
his federal habeas petition.
*
This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent
except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3.
**
The Honorable Jed S. Rakoff, Senior United States District Judge for
the Southern District of New York, sitting by designation.
We review de novo the district court’s denial of the petition and its findings
of fact for clear error. See Rodney v. Filson, 916 F.3d 1254, 1258 (9th Cir. 2019).
As here, state court decisions issued without an explanation are presumed
adjudicated on the merits. See Kernan v. Hinojosa, 136 S. Ct. 1603, 1606 (2016).
We may grant relief pursuant to Section 2254(d) of the Antiterrorism and
Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA) only when a petitioner
demonstrates either that “there was no reasonable basis” for the state court’s
summary denial, or that the state court’s determination of the facts was “not merely
wrong, but objectively unreasonable.” Sanders v. Cullen, 873 F.3d 778, 794-95
(9th Cir. 2017), cert. denied sub nom. Sanders v. Davis, 139 S. Ct. 798 (2019)
(citation and internal quotation marks omitted).
We reject Petitioner’s argument that the California Supreme Court
unreasonably determined the facts in summarily denying Petitioner’s ineffective
assistance of counsel claim. See Wood v. Allen, 558 U.S. 290, 301 (2010) (noting
that a state court’s factual determination is not unreasonable “merely because” a
different conclusion could have been reached by the federal habeas court). In
addition, on federal habeas review, our examination of counsel’s performance is
“doubly deferential.” White v. Ryan, 895 F.3d 641, 666 (9th Cir. 2018). The
California Supreme Court had before it the entire record of the trial and post-trial
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proceedings, including declarations from witnesses that Petitioner identified as
exculpatory. Accordingly, the district court committed no error in denying,
without an evidentiary hearing, Petitioner’s claims of ineffective assistance of
counsel by finding that the state court ruling was not an unreasonable
determination of the facts. See Cullen v. Pinholster, 563 U.S. 170, 183 (2011)
(“[W]hen the state-court record precludes habeas relief under the limitations of §
2254(d), a district court is not required to hold an evidentiary hearing.”) (citation
and internal quotation marks omitted); see also Hibbler v. Benedetti, 693 F.3d
1140, 1147 (9th Cir. 2012) (“A state court’s decision not to hold an evidentiary
hearing does not render its fact-finding process unreasonable so long as the state
court could have reasonably concluded that the evidence already adduced was
sufficient to resolve the factual question. . . .”) (citation and internal quotation
marks omitted). Finally, Petitioner failed to identify any United States Supreme
Court authority precluding summary denial by the California Supreme Court when
the full record is before the state court. See Hedlund v. Ryan, 854 F.3d 557, 565-
66 (9th Cir. 2017), as amended (explaining that habeas relief is unavailable if
“Supreme Court cases give no clear answer to the question presented”).
AFFIRMED.
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