Case ID: f-appx_384/html/0582-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
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Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

Christopher DUPREE, Petitioner-Appellant, v. Ernest ROE, Warden; Sacramento County District Attorney’s Office; Sacramento County Sheriff's Department; Robert Bell; Kay Maulsby; Michael Yarborough, Warden, Respondents-Appellees.
    No. 08-15547.
    United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit.
    Submitted June 14, 2010.
    Filed June 16, 2010.
    John P. Ward, Law Offices of John Ward, San Francisco, CA, for Petitioner-Appellant.
    Harry Joseph Colombo, Deputy Assistant Attorney General, Mary Jo Graves, Esquire, AGCA — Office of the California Attorney General, Sacramento, CA, for Respondents-Appellees.
    
      Before: RYMER and FISHER, Circuit Judges, and PALLMEYER, District Judge.
    
    
      
       The Honorable Rebecca R. Pallmeyer, United States District Judge for the Northern District of Illinois, sitting by designation.
    
   MEMORANDUM

Christopher Dupree appeals the district court’s denial of his habeas corpus petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2254. We affirm.

The issue before us is whether the California Court of Appeal unreasonably applied federal law in holding that due process was not violated by the trial court’s instructions, or failure to instruct, on the temporal requirements for felony robbery/burglary murder. See In re Winship, 397 U.S. 358, 90 S.Ct. 1068, 25 L.Ed.2d 368 (1970); Estelle v. McGuire, 502 U.S. 62, 72, 112 S.Ct. 475, 116 L.Ed.2d 385 (1991). It did not. The instructions told the jurors that the killing had to occur during the commission or attempted commission of the robbery/burglary, and the murder had to be committed to carry out or advance the underlying felonies. Du-pree points to no authority that being part of a “continuous transaction” is a separate element on which the jury had to be instructed. Nor, assuming dual motivations were in play, did the instructions overall fail to inform the jury that the felonious purpose could not be merely incidental, as Dupree contends. To the contrary, the jury was specifically instructed that the special circumstance could not be established if the robbery/burglary were merely incidental to commission of the murder. Thus, no Winship error appears.

Likewise, we cannot say the instructions upheld by the court of appeal left the entire trial so infected that Dupree’s conviction offends clearly established notions of due process. Dupree requested no instructions that (in his view) would have clarified or better articulated California law along the lines he now presses. Regardless, errors of California law, if any, are not cognizable on federal habeas review; and Dupree points to no clearly established federal law imposing an obligation on the trial court sua sponte to have given any different instructions. Under the instructions that were given, a reasonable juror would not have concluded that Dupree and the others entered the apartment just to assault Stack, but killed Lewis instead before deciding to look for the safe; and the jury could certainly find that killing Lewis advanced the purpose of the burglary.

AFFIRMED. 
      
       This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent except as provided by 9th Cir. R. 36-3.