Alexander Diaz v. Joe Lizarraga ( 2019 )

NOT FOR PUBLICATION FILED
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS JAN 22 2019
MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK
U.S. COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT
ALEXANDER DIAZ, No. 16-17064
Petitioner-Appellant, D.C. No. 3:15-cv-00979-JST
v.
MEMORANDUM*
JOE A. LIZARRAGA, Warden,
Respondent-Appellee.
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Northern District of California
Jon S. Tigar, District Judge, Presiding
Submitted January 17, 2019**
San Francisco, California
Before: WALLACE and FRIEDLAND, Circuit Judges, and ADELMAN,***
District Judge.
Alexander Diaz was convicted of attempted murder in California after the
prosecution introduced statements he made during an interrogation. Diaz petitioned
*
This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent
except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3.
**
The panel unanimously concludes this case is suitable for decision
without oral argument. See Fed. R. App. P. 34(a)(2).
***
The Honorable Lynn S. Adelman, United States District Judge for the
Eastern District of Wisconsin, sitting by designation.
for a writ of habeas corpus, which the district court denied, arguing that the
admission of his statements violated his rights under Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S.
436 (1966). We granted a certificate of appealability and have jurisdiction under 28
U.S.C. § 2253. We affirm.
The California Court of Appeal gave as an independent reason for its
decision that any error was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. People v. Diaz,
No. A136143, 2014 WL 3339498, at * 11-12 (Cal. Ct. App. July 9, 2014). Under
AEDPA, this means that “a federal court may not award habeas relief under
[section] 2254 unless the harmlessness determination itself was unreasonable.”
Davis v. Ayala, 135 S. Ct. 2187, 2199 (2015) (emphasis in original) (quoting Fry v.
Pliler, 551 U.S. 112, 119 (2007)). “[A] state-court decision is not unreasonable if
fairminded jurists could disagree on its correctness.” Id. (internal quotation marks
and alteration omitted) (quoting Harrington v. Richter, 562 U.S. 86, 101 (2011)).
Assuming constitutional error here, fairminded jurists could disagree on
whether any Miranda error was harmless. There was no dispute at trial that Diaz
struck Officer Brower with a van; Diaz’s defense was that the collision was
unintentional. Diaz’s statements in the interrogation did not conflict with or
undermine that defense because he also told the interrogating officers that the
collision was an accident. The only statements that might have prejudiced Diaz
were those that the jury interpreted as lies to the interrogating officers. But to the
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extent that the jury viewed falsehoods as evidence of his guilt, Diaz had already
made overtly false statements to the police, including that he was not in the
relevant city at all, before any Miranda violation took place. This record does not
show that “the state court’s decision to reject his claim was so lacking in
justification that there was an error well understood and comprehended in existing
law beyond any possibility for fairminded disagreement.” Id. (internal quotation
marks omitted) (quoting Harrington, 562 U.S. at 103).
AFFIRMED.
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