my show not only that the ruling was erroneous but that it was so egregiously prejudicial that it made the trial fundamentally unfair and created a likelihood and an innocent person was convicted hitman to murder his ex wife and her boyfriend the trial court excluded as irrelevant as certain testimony regarding some conversation step to snare had with bennett who sat petitioner up with the hit man who was in fact and a cover officer now the state courts found that the evidence was irrelevant  they explained that the conversations did not make any consequential fact including whether petitioner intended to hire the hit man more or less likely  there argued that the state court violated his right to presenting defense by excluding relevant testimony that he considered testimony in that case it was expert testimony regarding the mental state on the day of the homicide this court rejected the argument and it said that the the argument that the state court relevance was wrong did not present a federal question it was not going to nd guess the state court relevance ruling which is a state law determination and that was the end of that argument and that should be the  end of this argument because petitioner that's the way petitioner has framed the claim and and this court is not going to nd guess that state court ruling now that doesn't mean that you could never have a due had gone to the meeting with the him and only because of his fear of ms bennett's instead he testified that he even though he had told ms bennett that he was going to go to the meeting  fact had no plans to do self and only changed his mind at the last minute when his fiance and her sons had to go to a her her at the fiance's grandfather's house because he was ill centrally this opened up a time that happened to coincide with the meeting and he decided to go get it over with and maybe calexico evidence go to the police  petitioner had not said well i acted as i did only because i felt compelled to do so out of fear and to protect myself or my family for these two things in mind the state court was reasonable in determining that these conversations were relevant moreover defendant has shown no made no showing that the proceedings were fundamentally unfair unfair or that in fact he was innocent to the contrary the evidence against him was extremely strong he was caught on video he and the district court characterize it this way they were friendly they were and good terms but the this argument ignores the plain record on the video defendant a showing complaining that he had paid his ex wife fourteen thousand dollars in the last couple months that he could not continue to do so and he had also center threatening text about the child support proceedings that the ex wife had recently financial ability but the state and show that he could carry the seven thousand five hundred dollars that was promised to the hitman again on the videotape to snare it is sharon saying he had just paid fourteen thousand ncorroborated and frankly far fetched story to believe petitioner you would have to believe that even though he feared ms bennett he told her he was going to go to the meeting with him and he in fact was not going to go further you would have to believe that when he changed his mind at the last minute and decided to go at that point he had not decided to play along and pretend he was having that man but he was just going to say no and then collect some evidence and i go to the police and but then he became so afraid journey meeting that he decided to play along and pretend but even though this was the case even though he was so afraid of the hitman he gave the hitman his real name and phone number he gave the hitman his fiance's telephone number he gave him the hitman the ability to find his ex wife have ex wife's house he gave her an accurate physical layout of the house he gave her a strategy of how to attack the ex wife and her boyfriend in their garage and he did this even though he was going to double cross the hitman who he purportedly  ed not only that but you'd have to believe that he didn't go to the police beforehand he didn't warn his ex wife before and and he didn't go to the police afterward  district court seem to believe that the trial court should have done something beyond simply rely on its relevance ruling to find that any right presented defense claim had to fail but of course there is no right to present irrelevant evidence and so the state court once it found that that the elements that's relevant didn't have to go any further to  that the district judge didn't really have the authority to do it well that's right we so there is no authority for the district court to nd guess the eviden was making that decision but as far as the state just the decision of the state court is protected frankly because of the basis they say well  determination that's made at the state court level and i guess you're saying that the federal court should never rule that's exactly right your honor and the these sorts of decisions by trial courts regarding relevance even if they were to come on can't present there's no federal constitutional right to present the relevant test and so even to get so once a state court determines the evidence is irrelevant then and holding that also should lead to a conclusion that that this court would then to conclude that made the trial fundamentally unfair and that a reasonable showed a likelihood an innocent person is convicted that would be a separate due process violation so we have the right if a right to present a defense claim is based on their relevance allegedly are only so relevant role in this court and keith said you can't just disagree with extreme incidents where a case completely went off the rails and there is we believe that there was a fundamentally unfair process there and that's a separate showing i defend his name and try petitioners not even try to make that showing and for the reasons i just happy honor as well i mean i don't i don't know whether this confidential informant with be available well trial or not yeah petitioner i believe could have called her and good morning may please the court my name is nicholas curran i'm an attorney with kathleen's on urn associates and i represent the at the leash on field the trial court in this case a vis aerated mr field mintz defense where prevented him from testifying to his interactions with trina be the affect those interactions had on his state of mind and his conduct because the truck or precluded him from testifying to these issues mr feilding was unable to explain to the jury why he met with an undercover police officer posing as a hit he was not required to call or not i'm not suggesting i'm just trying to get the backdrop here yes your honor your honor is correct that it was put on the record that trina bennett was available to testify she was not called by either the prosecution or the defense in this case one of the issues that are one of the things that the state has said this morning that i take issue in particular is the notion that this is a request for a v s relief based solely on a state court evidentiary ruling concerning relevance this is an argument that the state has made repeatedly in this litigation it was an argument that was rejected by the district court and it is an argument that should be rejected by this co certainly the appellate court made passing reference to the fact that the defendant had argued in his direct appeal that the exclusion of the evidence tonight his constitutional right to present a defense but he did not analyze the claim now i would agree that because the court made passing reference to the constitutional claim that was set forth by mr field men that means that under harrington it's entitle to at the deference but even under ed put deference case to focus on in the one that mr film is claim is based on his claim the kentucky in crazy kentucky the supreme court held that there are constitutional limitations to the extent to which a state court can exclude evidence on the basis of relevance so in crane you had a situation just to provide a little bit of context where the kentucky had a system in place whereby once a trial court ruled on the voluntary ness of a confession evidence related to the voluntariness of the confession was not to be submitted to the jury so in crane what you had is the defendant want to present evidence related to the circumstances of his confession the trial court ruled that that evidence could not be introduced to the jury because that evidence only pertained to the issue of voluntariness the trial court had denied the defendant's motion to suppress his confession and held that the confession was given voluntarily the supreme court said that the state court made a mistake in determining that that evidence the circumstances of the confession was relevant only to the legal issue of the voluntariness of that confession because it was also it should have been admitted to earth scuse me allowed to be presented to the jury because it was also relevant to the factual to be heard as the supreme court put it in washington verse texas the right to present a defense includes the right to present the defendant's version of the facts as well as the prosecution's to the jury so that the jury may decide where the tr  lies in this case mr field and it's completely deprived of the opportunity to prevent his version of the facts to the jury the trial court completely barred mr fielden from testifying to any of his interactions with trin bennett during the five to six weeks leading up to his meeting with the undercover officer the corporate clued in mr fielding from testifying that he was afraid of trees of that because she had told him that she had broken into a home and shot someone in the truck or prevented mr fielding from testifying to the fact that trina bennett was the one who initiated a conversation about having his ex wife killed and she told him that she knew people who could get the job done the trucker prevented  fielding from testifying that trina bennett continuously called him to solicit and engage in conversation regarding having his ex wife kill the trapper prevented him from testifying that tree and then it continually pressed him for money in fact there was one occasion where trina venet contacted him and told him that she had people who had come into town who were there to do the job mr philbin was not allowed to testify to any of that  and this completely prevented him from explaining to the jury why if he did not actually intend to have his ex wife killed he agreed to meet with the undercover officer posing as a hitman  defense attorney in this case as soon as she started to get into these conversations with trina bennett the state objected in the trial court sustain the objection and it was kind of a moving target as to why exactly the trial court was sustaining the objections at times it was relevant at times it was foundation that times it was where you have to raise a compulsion defend i encourage this court strongly to read the trial court's response to  efforts to present this evidence because becomes quite evident that the trial judge just simply misapprehended fundamental rules regarding the laws of evidence but beyond that she never considered the significance of the evidence that mr fielding was trying to present to his ability to present a defense and as the district court held without being able to introduce this  then he was convicted filed a direct appeal the direct appeal was denied i believe he filed a petition for it was a post conviction relief it might have been some other form of collateral which was denied myself yes you're on because this is a this is an angle that  and to his credit he raised this constitutional issue which the district court granted relief on although it was denied to state for well we are faced with a situation where the state was aware of the availability of ms bennett was made aware yes your honor but but if anything the availability of miss bennett to testify actually support mr feelin's claim that he was on constitutionally prevented from testifying to these conversations he had with her which impacted his state of mind and ultimate this undercover officer because as the supreme court has held and many other courts have held the greatest engine we have for discovery of the truth is cross examination so in this case these conversations that mr fielding wanted to testify to they were being offered for the truth of the matter asserted they were all being offered to show the effect those conversations had on his state of mind and on his conduct and the state could have called trina bennett not only could have subjected mr feilding to cross examination concerning these the statements that he allege that she made to had an extensive criminal nobody disputed that she was the one who initiated contact between mr field and the undercover officer it's not a stretch at all to think that she made representations to mr field men about being able to get this done that made him concerned for his own safety you know as far as there are a couple of other can things i want to get to very quickly so one of the reasons that the court found that this evidence was not relevant or believed it was not relevant was because it dealt with issues weeks before the actual meeting with the undercover police officer but what's interesting about that is the state endeavor to admit and that the trial court allowed it to introduce evidence related to a may six petition that was filed by mr field men's ex wife to modify his child support obligation and the theory was that well something that happened in may of that year could reasonably motivate his actions and provide him with a motive to have hired this killis ex wife but when it came to mr field men's evidence the truck work applied a completely different standard all of mr field men's conversations with trina bennett took place well after may th and in fact they took place during the weeks immediately preceding his meeting with this undercover officer and it's completely contrary to human experience to suggest that events that occurred in the days months weeks leading up to this meeting didn't have an impact on mr field and suspicious undercover officers the other thing that i want to point out which i think is critically important is this idea that because mr field men did not file a compulsion defense he somehow disclaimed any fear of and that is as a district court held completely untrue mr field and stuff and it was not that he committed the offense but that he had an affirmative defense to avoid culpability it was always that he didn't commit the offense because he lacked the requisite case in which the state court made a relevance rule and the supreme court the federal court overturned but that's not the case instead crane was a case about who got to decide what to believe with respect to evidence that had to do with a confession and that case on that case and it was a part of a series of cases which had to do with  procedure two for filing a suppression motion of a question and so in that in that case kentucky had a procedure by which the trial court heard the evidence with respect to voluntary us made a determination and then if that and if you determine that if the trial court determines that it was voluntary none of that testimony then went in front of the jury so it wasn't a question of whether it be relevant or not it was a question of who got to decide and the supreme court said to me a jury got to decide that issue and then finally quickly his story he even testified and this is on page eighteen have the separate appendix that he feared bennett he on page nineteen of the separate appendix testified that she had told him that he had that she had tied up an old man and blew his brains out petitioner was able to testify to that she was able to testify that she  been badgering him that he didn't want to go that he only decided to go at the lab and that's what he was able to tell the story the trial judge simply