Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca9-09-99005/USCOURTS-ca9-09-99005-3/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 535
Nature of Suit: Habeas Corpus - Death Penalty
Cause of Action: 

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FOR PUBLICATION

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

HECTOR JUAN AYALA,

Petitioner-Appellant,

v.

ROBERT K. WONG, Warden,

Respondent-Appellee.

No. 09-99005

D.C. No.

3:01-CV-01322-IEG-PLC

AMENDED OPINION

AND ORDER

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Southern District of California

Irma E. Gonzalez, Chief District Judge, Presiding

Argued and Submitted

February 9, 2012—Pasadena, California

Filed September 13, 2013

Amended February 25, 2014

Before: Stephen Reinhardt, Kim McLane Wardlaw,

and Consuelo M. Callahan, Circuit Judges.

Opinion by Judge Reinhardt;

Dissent by Judge Callahan;

Order;

Dissent to Order by Judge Ikuta

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2 AYALA V. WONG

SUMMARY*

Habeas Corpus/Death Penalty

The panel replaced its opinion and dissent, filed on

September 13, 2013 and published at 730 F.3d 831, with an

amended opinion and amended dissent, denied a petition for

rehearing en banc on behalf of the court, and ordered that no

further petitions shall be entertained in a case in which the

panel reversed the district court’s denial of a 28 U.S.C.

§ 2254 habeas corpus petition challenging a conviction and

capital sentence for murder and robbery, based on a violation

of Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79 (1986).

In the amended opinion, the panel reversed and remanded

with instructions to grant the writ and order that petitioner be

released from custody unless the state elects to retry him

within a reasonable amount of time. The panel first explained

that, as to whether the exclusion of petitioner and his counsel

from the ex parte Batson proceedings was federal

constitutional error, the California Supreme Court either

resolved the issue in petitioner’s favor or did not reach it. 

Reviewing de novo, the panel held that the exclusion of

petitioner and his counsel constituted prejudicial error that

likely prevented petitioner from showing that the prosecution

utilized its peremptory challenges in a racially discriminatory

manner. The panel then held that the state court’s harmless

error finding had a prejudicial effect on the verdict.

In the amended dissent, Judge Callahan disagreed with

the majority’s holding because it inappropriately

* This summary constitutes no part of the opinion of the court. It has

been prepared by court staff for the convenience of the reader.

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AYALA V. WONG 3

deconstructed the California Supreme Court’s opinion to

justify its evasion of the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death

Penalty Act to review the state court’s decisions de novo, and

because petitioner’s federal claim is barred by Teague v.

Lane, 489 U.S. 288 (1989).

Judge Ikuta, joined by Judges O’Scannlain, Tallman,

Bybee, Callahan, Bea, M. Smith, and N.R. Smith, dissented

from the denial of rehearing en banc. Judge Ikuta disagreed

with the panel’s de novo review of petitioner’s Batson claim

based on a novel theory for rebutting the presumption that the

state court adjudicated the federal claim on the merits. Judge

Ikuta wrote that the majority’s reasoning ignores recent

Supreme Court jurisprudence and conflicts with this court’s

sister circuits.

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4 AYALA V. WONG

COUNSEL

Robin L. Phillips and Anthony J. Dain, Procopio, Cory,

Hargreaves & Savitch LLP, San Diego, California, for

Petitioner-Appellant.

Robin H. Urbanski, Deputy Attorney General of California,

San Diego, California, for Respondent-Appellee.

OPINION

REINHARDT, Circuit Judge:

State prisoner Hector Juan Ayala (“Ayala”) appeals the

denial of his petition for a writ of habeas corpus. During the

selection of the jury that convicted Ayala and sentenced him

to death, the prosecution used its peremptory challenges to

strike all of the black and Hispanic jurors available for

challenge. The trial judge concluded that Ayala had

established a prima facie case of racial discrimination under

Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79 (1986), but permitted the

prosecution to give its justifications for the challenges of

these jurors in an in camera hearing from which Ayala and

his counsel were excluded. The trial judge then accepted the

prosecution’s justifications for its strikes without disclosing

them to the defense or permitting it to respond. The

California Supreme Court held that the trial court erred as a

matter of state law, relying on a number of federal cases, but

found that any error—state or federal—was “harmless.”

We conduct our review of Ayala’s appeal under the

Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996

(AEDPA). In reviewing Ayala’s federal claim, the state court

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AYALA V. WONG 5

faced two questions: first, whether the exclusion of Ayala and

his counsel from the ex parte Batson proceedings was federal

constitutional error, and, second, whether any such error was

harmless. We conclude that the state court either resolved the

first question in Ayala’s favor or did not reach it. We

therefore apply de novo review, and conclude that there was

federal constitutional error. Turning to the second question,

harmlessness, we conclude that the state court found that any

federal constitutional error was harmless. We review that

determination under Brecht v. Abrahamson, 507 U.S. 619,

623 (1993), and conclude that the violation of Ayala’s Batson

rights was prejudicial. We therefore remand with instructions

to grant the writ.

I.

On April 26, 1985, Jose Luis Rositas, Marcos Antonio

Zamora, and Ernesto Dominguez Mendez were shot and

killed in the garage of an automobile repair shop in San

Diego, California. A fourth victim, Pedro Castillo, was shot

in the back but managed to escape alive. Castillo identified

Ayala, his brother Ronaldo Ayala, and Jose Moreno as the

shooters. He claimed that these men had intended to rob the

deceased, who ran a heroin distribution business out of the

repair shop.

Ayala was subsequently charged with three counts of

murder, one count of attempted murder, one count of robbery

and three counts of attempted robbery. The information

further alleged that the special circumstances of multiple

murder and murder in the attempted commission of robberies

were applicable in his case. A finding that one of these

special circumstances was true was required in order for

Ayala to be eligible for the death penalty.

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6 AYALA V. WONG

Jury selection began in San Diego in January 1989. Each

of the more than 200 potential jurors who responded to the

summons and survived hardship screening was directed to fill

out a 77-question, 17-page questionnaire. Over the next three

months, the court and the parties interviewed each of the

prospective jurors regarding his or her ability to follow the

law, utilizing the questionnaires as starting points for their

inquiry. Those jurors who had not been dismissed for cause

were called back for general voir dire, at which smaller

groups of jurors were questioned by both the prosecution and

the defense. The parties winnowed the remaining group

down to twelve seated jurors and six alternates through the

use of peremptory challenges. Each side was allotted twenty

peremptory challenges which could be used upon any of the

twelve jurors then positioned to serve on the jury. After

twelve seated jurors were finally selected, both parties were

allotted an additional six peremptory challenges to be used in

the selection of alternates.

The prosecution employed seven of the 18 peremptory

challenges it used in the selection of the seated jurors to

dismiss each black or Hispanic prospective juror who was

available for challenge, resulting in a jury that was devoid of

anymembers of these ethnic groups. In response, Ayala, who

is Hispanic, brought three separate motions pursuant to

Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79 (1986), claiming that the

prosecution was systematically excluding minority jurors on

the basis of race.1

1 The motions were technically made under People v. Wheeler,

22 Cal.3d 258 (1978), the California analogue to Batson. Because “a

Wheeler motion serves as an implicit Batson objection,” we characterize

Ayala’s motions, and the proceedings that followed, as being pursuant to

Batson. Crittenden v. Ayers, 624 F.3d 943, 951 (9th Cir. 2010).

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AYALA V. WONG 7

The defense made its first Batson motion after the

prosecution challenged two black jurors. The trial court

found that the defense had not yet established a prima facie

case of racial discrimination, but nevertheless determined that

it would require the prosecution to state its reasons for

challenging the jurors in question. At the prosecutor’s

insistence, and despite the defense’s objections, the court

refused to let the defendant or his counsel be present at the

hearing in which the prosecution set forth these reasons and

the court determined whether they were legitimate.

The trial judge continued to employ this ex parte, in

camera procedure to hear and consider the prosecutor’s

purported reasons for challenging minority jurors following

the defense’s second and third Batson motions. He did so

despite his determination, by the third motion, that the

defense had established a prima facie showing of racial

discrimination.

Ultimately, the trial judge concluded that the prosecutor

had proffered plausible race-neutral reasons for the exclusion

of each of the seven minority jurors, and denied the defense’s

Batson motions. Although the ex parte Batson proceedings

were transcribed, this transcript — and thus, the prosecution’s

proffered race-neutral reasons for striking the seven black and

Hispanic jurors — were not made available to Ayala and his

counsel until after the conclusion of the trial.

The jury convicted Ayala of all counts save a single

attempted robbery count, and found true the special

circumstance allegations. At the penalty phase, it returned a

verdict of death.

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8 AYALA V. WONG

Early in the process of jury selection, the trial judge had

instructed the parties to return to the court all the

questionnaires the prospective jurors had completed, and

advised them that he would be “keeping the originals.” At

some point during or following the trial, however, all

questionnaires, save those of the twelve sitting jurors and five

alternates, were lost. The questionnaires of four additional

jurors — including the sixth alternate — were located in the

defense counsel’s files, but the remaining 193 questionnaires

have never been located.

On direct appeal from his conviction, Ayala challenged

the trial court’s use of ex parte Batson proceedings. He also

claimed that the loss of the jury questionnaires deprived him

of his right to a meaningful appeal of the denial of his Batson

motion. A divided California Supreme Court upheld his

conviction on the basis of harmless error and also upheld the

sentence. People v. Ayala, 6 P.3d 193 (Cal. 2000). The court

unanimously held that under state law the trial judge had

erred in conducting the Batson proceedings ex parte. Id. at

204 (majority opinion); id. at 291 (George, C.J., dissenting).

A majority went on to hold, however, that any error was

harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. Id. at 204. It also

concluded that the loss of the questionnaires was harmless

beyond a reasonable doubt. Id. at 208. In dissent, Chief

Justice George, joined by Justice Kennard, expressed his

disagreement with the majority’s “unprecedented conclusion

that the erroneous exclusion of the defense from a crucial

portion of jury selection proceedings may be deemed

harmless.” Id. at 221 (George, C.J., dissenting). Ayala’s

petition for certiorari was denied by the United States

Supreme Court on May 14, 2001. Ayala v. California,

532 U.S. 1029 (2001).

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AYALA V. WONG 9

Ayala timely filed his federal habeas petition. The district

court denied relief, but issued a Certificate of Appealability

as to Ayala’s Batson-related claims and his claim that the

state had violated his Vienna Convention right to consular

notification.2 Ayala now appeals.

II.

In order for this court to grant Ayala habeas relief, we

must find that he suffered a violation of his federal

constitutional rights. To do so, Ayala must demonstrate both

that (1) the state court committed federal constitutional error

and (2) that he was prejudiced as a result. We discuss the

issue of error in Part III and the issue of prejudice in Part IV.

Here, Ayala alleges two federal constitutional violations,

the first of which is the principal focus of this opinion. 

Ayala’s primary claim relates to his exclusion and his

counsel’s from the Batson proceedings. Ayala’s secondary

claim, which exacerbates the overall error in this case, relates

to the state court’s loss of the juror questionnaires prior to

Ayala’s appeal. We discuss these errors separately, in

Sections III.A and III.B respectively, devoting much greater

attention to the first, although the second would strongly

bolster the first.

The state, in defending against the grant of habeas relief

to Ayala, makes two principal arguments. First, it contends

that Ayala was not prejudiced by his exclusion or his

counsel’s from the Batson proceedings, or by the loss of the

2 Because we conclude that Ayala is entitled to relief on his Batsonrelated claims, we need not decide whether the district court erred in

rejecting his Vienna Convention claim.

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10 AYALA V. WONG

juror questionnaires. This was the state court’s basis for

denying Ayala relief.

Second, the state raises a procedural objection that

Ayala’s claim regarding his exclusion during the Batson

proceedings is barred by Teague v. Lane, 489 U.S. 288

(1989). “[I]n addition to performing any analysis required by

AEDPA, a federal court considering a habeas petition must

conduct a threshold Teague analysis when the issue is

properly raised by the state.” Horn v. Banks, 536 U.S. 266,

272 (2002). We conduct the requisite Teague analysis in Part

V of this opinion.

In Part VI of this opinion, we respond to arguments made

by the dissent, and in Part VII we set forth our conclusion and

remand to the district court with instructions to grant Ayala

the writ of habeas corpus.

III.

As stated above, Ayala alleges that the state court

committed two distinct federal constitutional errors. The first

alleged error relates to the state court’s exclusion of Ayala

and his counsel from the Batson proceedings (referred to

sometimes in this opinion as the “ex parte Batson

proceedings”). The second error relates to the state court’s

loss of the juror questionnaires. We address each error in

turn, concluding that Ayala is correct and that the state court

committed both federal constitutional errors, although we

hold that the first error is sufficient in itself to warrant the

issuance of the writ, and the second simply bolsters the first.

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AYALA V. WONG 11

A.

“For more than a century, [the Supreme] Court

consistently and repeatedly has reaffirmed that racial

discrimination by the State in jury selection offends the Equal

Protection Clause.” Georgia v. McCollum, 505 U.S. 42, 44

(1992). Batson established the three-step inquiry used to

determine whether this basic constitutional guarantee has

been violated. First, the defendant must make a prima facie

showing that the prosecution has exercised peremptory

challenges in a racially discriminatory manner. Batson,

476 U.S. at 96. Such a showing may be made, as the trial

judge concluded it was in Ayala’s case, where the prosecution

has engaged in a pattern of strikes against jurors of a

particular race. Id. at 97. Second, once the defendant has

made a prima facie showing, “the burden shifts to the State to

come forward with a neutral explanation for challenging” the

jurors. Id. Third, the trial court must then determine

whether, taking into consideration the prosecutor’s

explanations for his conduct, “the defendant has established

purposeful discrimination.” Id. at 98.

Ayala contends that the exclusion of the defense from the

proceedings in which the prosecution justified its strikes of

the seven black and Hispanic jurors, and the trial court

accepted those justifications, violated his right to the

assistance of counsel and his right to be personally present

and to assist in his defense. He further contends that these

errors prevented him from ensuring that the prosecution did

not violate his fundamental right to a jury chosen free from

racial discrimination.

Before we may evaluate the merits of Ayala’s contention,

we must first determine the appropriate standard of review to

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12 AYALA V. WONG

apply. Specifically, because Ayala’s habeas petition is

subject to the requirements of the Antiterrorism and Effective

Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA), see Kennedy v.

Lockyer, 379 F.3d 1041, 1046 (9th Cir. 2004), we must

determine whether Ayala’s claim of federal constitutional

error was adjudicated on the merits, and if so what the nature

of that adjudication was.3 We do so in Section III.A.1,

concluding that the California Supreme Court did not find

against Ayala on the merits of his claim of federal

constitutional error, and therefore § 2254(d) does not require

deference to such a determination. We then conclude in

Section III.A.2 that, under de novo review, Ayala’s

constitutional rights were violated when he and his counsel

were excluded from stages two and three of the Batson

proceedings.

 

3

“By its terms § 2254(d) bars relitigation of any claim ‘adjudicated on

the merits’ in state court, subject only to the exceptions in §§ 2254(d)(1)

and (d)(2).” Harrington v. Richter, 131 S. Ct. 770, 784 (2011).

Accordingly, if the California Supreme Court made an “adjudication on

the merits” that the exclusion of Ayala and his counsel from his Batson

proceedings was not erroneous under federal constitutional law, then

Ayala would not be entitled to relief on his claim unless that state court

adjudication

(1) resulted in a decision that was contrary to, or

involved an unreasonable application of, clearly

established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme

Court of the United States; or

(2) resulted in a decision that was based on an

unreasonable determination of the facts in light of the

evidence presented in the State court proceeding.

28 U.S.C. § 2254(d).

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AYALA V. WONG 13

1.

The first question is whether the state court made an

adjudication on the merits as to whether the exclusion of

Ayala and his counsel from the Batson proceedings was

federal constitutional error. Answering that question is

significantly more difficult in this case than in most federal

habeas appeals. We are confronted with an especially unclear

state court decision that requires us to delve more deeply than

is typical into the question of what the state court did or did

not “adjudicate on the merits” the question of constitutional

error. The California Supreme Court, when confronted with

Ayala’s claim, concluded that the exclusion of the defense

from these proceedings was, in fact, erroneous as a matter of

state law. The state court began its analysis by stating the

legal framework for Ayala’s challenge. It identified the threestep process for a Batson challenge and noted that, under

Batson, no particular procedures were required. Ayala, 6 P.3d

at 202. It then made three distinct legal determinations. First,

it found that “no matters of trial strategy were revealed”

during the Batson proceedings in Ayala’s case. Id. at 202–03.

Second, it held “as a matter of state law” that it was “error to

exclude defendant from participating in the hearings on his

[Batson] motions.” Id. at 203. The California Supreme Court

observed that “it seems to be almost universally recognized

that ex parte proceedings following a [Batson] motion . . .

should not be conducted unless compelling reasons justify

them.” Id. at 203. Because no matters of trial strategy were

revealed here and thus no such “compelling reasons” existed,

the state court “concluded that error occurred under state

law.” Id. at 204. Third, turning to the question of prejudice

(a subject we discuss in Part IV), the state court

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14 AYALA V. WONG

conclude[d] that the error was harmless under

state law (People v. Watson (1956) 46 Cal.2d

818, 836, 299 P.2d 243), and that, if federal

error occurred, it, too, was harmless beyond a

reasonable doubt (Chapman v. California

(1967) 386 U.S. 18, 24, 87 S. Ct. 824, 17

L.Ed.2d 705) as a matter of federal law.

Id; see also id. at 204–08 (analyzing prejudice further).

Having found error but having also deemed it harmless, the

state court denied Ayala relief.

There is no doubt that the California Supreme Court

found that the exclusion of Ayala and his counsel from the

Batson proceedings was erroneous under state law. The state

court made no express finding with respect to whether the

exclusion of Ayala and his counsel from the Batson

proceedings was also error under federal constitutional law.

Although it is not easy to interpret a state court’s silence,

there are only three possible determinations it could have

made in this case. The California Supreme Court either

(1) held that there was error under federal

constitutional law;

(2) did not decide whether there was error

under federal constitutional law; or

(3) held that there was no error under federal

constitutional law.

[hereinafter discussed as Options 1, 2, and 3

respectively]

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AYALA V. WONG 15

Of these three possibilities, only under Option 3—in which

the state court made an unfavorable determination on the

merits of Ayala’s claim of federal constitutional

error—would § 2254(d) require deference to a determination

against Ayala.4 Thus, we need determine only whether the

California Supreme Court’s silence is best interpreted as

Option 3—i.e., as holding that the exclusion of Ayala and his

counsel from theBatson proceedings was not erroneous under

federal constitutional law.

4 Under Option 1, i.e., if the California Supreme Court found error under

federal constitutional law, as well as under state law, an argument can be

made that we would be required to accord AEDPA deference to that

determination. That is, we could be required to give AEDPA deference in

favor of the petitioner. An argument can also be made that § 2254(d), by

its text and purpose, is inapplicable to a claim on which the petitioner

prevailed in state court, and therefore the claim should be reviewed de

novo. Finally, because habeas review is intended to provide relief to a

prisoner and not to the state, an argument can be made that a state court’s

determination in favor of petitioner cannot be relitigated on habeas review.

The question whether to accord AEDPA deference to a state court

determination favorable to a petitioner, review that determination de novo

or not review it at all is a question of first impression that we need not

decide in this case. In all three situations—de novo review, AEDPA

deference in favor ofthe petitioner, or no review—we would conclude that

there was federal constitutional error in Ayala’s trial. See discussion infra

Part III(A)(2).

Under Option 2, i.e., ifthe California Supreme Court found error with

respect to the Batson issue as a matter of state law only and did not decide

the question offederal constitutional error on the merits, our reviewwould

be de novo. See Cone v. Bell, 556 U.S. 449, 472 (2009) (reviewing de

novo because the “[state] courts did not reach the merits of [the

petitioner’s constitutional] claim”); Lott v. Trammel, 705 F.3d 1167, 1218

(10th Cir. 2013); Harris v. Thompson, 698 F.3d 609, 624 (7th Cir. 2012).

A decision “as a matter of state law only” perforce does not constitute an

“adjudication on the merits” of a federal claim, and therefore § 2254(d)

would not apply.

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16 AYALA V. WONG

In determining how to interpret state court silence on the

question of federal constitutional error, we consider, inter

alia, two recent Supreme Court decisions: Richter, 131 S. Ct.

770, and Johnson v. Williams, 133 S. Ct. 1088 (2013). In both

Richter and Williams, the Supreme Court applied a rebuttable

presumption that, even though the state court was silent with

respect to a fairly presented federal claim, the claim was

adjudicated on the merits. The Court’s rationale was that,

because the state court denied relief overall, it necessarily

adjudicated (and rejected) the federal claim. For example, in

the context of a summary denial, as in Richter, the state court

could not have denied relief overall without having rejected,

and thus adjudicated, every fairly presented federal claim.

Accordingly, the Supreme Court held, “[w]hen a federal

claim has been presented to a state court and the state court

has denied relief, it may be presumed that the state court

adjudicated the claim on the merits in the absence of any

indication or state-law procedural principles to the contrary.”

Richter, 131 S. Ct. at 784. The same was true when, in

Williams, the state court rejected a state law claim, was silent

with respect to a fairly presented federal claim, and denied

relief overall. See Williams, 133 S. Ct. at 1091. There too, the

state court could not have denied relief overall without having

rejected, and thus adjudicated, the federal claim presented by

the petitioner. Thus, the Supreme Court held, “[w]hen a state

court rejects a federal claim without expressly addressing that

claim, a federal habeas court must presume that the federal

claim was adjudicated on the merits—but that presumption

can in some limited circumstances be rebutted.” Id. at 1096

(discussing Richter). Here, the presumption is inapplicable

for several reasons. We need mention only a couple. First,

it was not necessary for the state court to reject the claim of

federal constitutional error on the merits in order for it to

deny relief to the petitioner. To the contrary, the state court

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AYALA V. WONG 17

denied Ayala relief on his federal constitutional claim only

because it concluded that the error (if any) was harmless. 

Second, the facts of this case dictate the conclusion that the

California Supreme Court believed that the error under state

law also constituted federal constitutional error.

We believe that there are only two plausible

interpretations of the California Supreme Court’s

decision—either Option 1 or Option 2. The most likely

interpretation is Option 1, i.e., that the California Supreme

Court held implicitly that there was error under state law and

under federal constitutional law alike. Notably, the California

Supreme Court based its determination that the trial court’s

exclusion of Ayala and his counsel was impermissible “as a

matter of state law,” Ayala, 6 P.3d at 203, on the fact that it

was “almost universally recognized” that ex parte Batson

proceedings are erroneous absent a compelling reason,

expressly relying for this conclusion on multiple federal cases

that themselves relied on federal constitutional law. Id. (citing

United States v. Roan Eagle, 867 F.2d 436, 441 (8th Cir.

1989); United States v. Garrison, 849 F.2d 103, 106 (4th Cir.

1988); United States v. Gordon, 817 F.2d 1538, 1541 (11th

Cir. 1987)). The court then quoted extensively from United

States v. Thompson, 827 F.2d 1254 (9th Cir. 1987), in which

we held that the ex parte proceedings in that case violated

federal constitutional law. Ayala, 6 P.3d at 203–04. In

summarizing its discussion of error (before moving to

prejudice), the California Supreme Court stated: “We have

concluded that error occurred under state law, and we have

noted Thompson’s suggestion that excluding the defense from

a [Batson]-type hearing may amount to a denial of due

process.” Id. at 204. The obvious message here is that the

California Supreme Court believed that the federal

constitutional issue should be decided the same way as the

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18 AYALA V. WONG

state law issue. This is consistent with the fact that California

courts interpret a violation of Wheeler — California’s state

equivalent of Batson — as proof of a violation of Batson. See

People v. Yeoman, 72 P.3d 1166, 1187 (Cal. 2003); see also

Johnson v. California, 545 U.S. 162 (2005) (holding that

Wheeler is more demanding than Batson). Thus, if we were

required to determine whether the California Supreme Court

adjudicated Ayala’s claim of federal constitutional error on

its merits in favor of the petitioner or the state, we would hold

without question that the California Supreme Court found

error in petitioner’s favor under both state law and federal

constitutional law—i.e., Option 1.

In support of this conclusion, we find instructive—and

likely dispositive—the Supreme Court’s discussion in Part III

of Williams. In that case, the petitioner challenged the

dismissal of a holdout juror under both California state law

and under the Sixth Amendment right to a fair jury. The

California Court of Appeal found that there was no error

under state law. It did not expressly decide petitioner’s

federal constitutional claim but, in the course of deciding the

state law claim, cited a California Supreme Court case,

People v. Cleveland, 21 P.3d 1225 (Cal. 2001). Cleveland in

turn discussed three federal appellate cases in depth, each of

which was based on the Sixth Amendment. In Williams, the

Supreme Court explained Cleveland as follows:

Cleveland did not expressly purport to decide

a federal constitutional question, but its

discussion of [the federal cases] shows that

the California Supreme Court understood

itself to be deciding a question with federal

constitutional dimensions. See 25 Cal.4th, at

487, 106 Cal. Rptr. 2d 313, 21 P.3d, at 1239

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AYALA V. WONG 19

(Werdegar, J., concurring) (emphasizing

importance of careful appellate review in

juror discharge cases in light of the

“constitutional dimension to the problem”).

Williams, 133 S. Ct. at 1098. A unanimous Supreme Court

then concluded that because the state court found no error

under state law on the basis in part of federal cases relying on

federal constitutional law, it likewise found no error using

that same analysis to decide the question under federal

constitutional law. Id. at 1098–99. The obverse is necessarily

true with respect to the state court’s analysis in this case. The

California Supreme Court, in finding that the exclusion of

Ayala and his counsel from the Batson proceedings was

erroneous under state law, cited to multiple federal cases

relying on federal law. It did not expressly purport to decide

the federal constitutional question, but it too must have

understood itself to be deciding a question with federal

constitutional dimensions and to be deciding it in petitioner’s

favor by its reliance on cases that held analogous conduct to

be erroneous under the federal Constitution. Thus, if we were

compelled to determine whether the California Supreme

Court adjudicated Ayala’s claim of federal constitutional

error on its merits in favor of the petitioner or the state, we

would hold without the slightest hesitation that it found that

the error occurred under federal constitutional law—i.e.,

Option 1. Accordingly, if we apply § 2254(d) at all, we defer

to a holding that there was federal constitutional error,

deference that favors Ayala. See discussion supra at 15 n. 4.

Alternatively, we are willing to assume another, albeit

weaker, interpretation of the California Supreme Court’s

decision that leads to the same result. Under that

interpretation, the state court did not, deliberately or

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20 AYALA V. WONG

otherwise, decide whether there was error under federal law,

i.e., Option 2 above. In short, it failed to decide the merits of

the question of federal constitutional error because it thought

there was nothing to be gained by doing so. It had already

decided that the state court had erred on state law grounds

and nothing further was to be gained by holding that it was

also a federal constitutional error. Richter and Williams

instruct us to afford a rebuttable presumption that a fairly

presented claim was “adjudicated on the merits” for purposes

of § 2254(d), but this presumption is rebuttable if there is

“anyindication orstate-law procedural principles” supporting

the conclusion that the state court did not adjudicate the

federal claim on the merits. Richter, 131 S. Ct. at 784–85.

Here, the California Supreme Court denied Ayala relief

overall but did so by (1) finding that the trial court committed

error on state law grounds, (2) failing to make any express

determination of error on federal constitutional grounds, and

(3) finding any error harmless under both the state and federal

standards for harmless error. In the context of these holdings,

the rebuttable presumption that Richter and Williams instruct

us to afford is, in fact, rebutted. The California Supreme

Court, by finding any alleged error harmless under both the

state and federal standards for harmless error, had no reason

to reach the question of whether federal constitutional error

occurred. This is not an unusual practice; courts often choose

not to decide the question whether an error occurred by

deciding that any error was harmless. Indeed, we have found

no published opinion in which, after a state court has denied

relief based on harmless error, a federal court has presumed

that the state court adjudicated the merits of the question of

error.

In fact, the California Supreme Court would have had

good reason not to decide the merits of the issue of federal

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AYALA V. WONG 21

constitutional error here. “If there is one doctrine more deeply

rooted than any other in the process of constitutional

adjudication, it is that [courts] ought not to pass on questions

of constitutionality . . . unless such adjudication is

unavoidable.” Clinton v. Jones, 520 U.S. 681, 690 n.11

(1997)(quoting Spector Motor Serv. v. McLaughlin, 323 U.S.

101, 105 (1944)). Moreover, where the intersection of state

law and federal constitutional law is complex, a state court

may very well prefer to decide only the state law claim and

not reach a federal constitutional question. The California

Supreme Court, by finding error under state law, determined

the question of error conclusively. This served the purpose of

providing guidance to the lower state courts. Finding that the

state law error also constituted federal constitutional error (or

did not) would, however, have served no purpose, once the

state court determined that any error was harmless. (The state

court was free to decide the issues presented in whatever

order it chose.) Indeed, respect for state judges requires

recognizing that a state court’s silence with respect to a fairly

presented federal claim may be intentional and prudent.

Our reasoning finds support in a different line of Supreme

Court cases, in which the Court has interpreted state court

silence with regard to a particular issue as not constituting an

“adjudication on the merits.” Many of these cases involved

claims of ineffective assistance of counsel brought under

Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668 (1984). Strickland

claims have two prongs, deficiency of counsel’s performance

and prejudice to the defendant; failure on either prong is

dispositive. Id. at 680. Accordingly, state courts frequently

decide Strickland claims by rejecting either deficiency or

prejudice and remain silent with respect to the other prong.

When these claims are raised in federal habeas proceedings,

the Supreme Court has repeatedly interpreted that silence as

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22 AYALA V. WONG

a failure to reach the other prong and therefore not an

“adjudication on the merits” of it. See Wiggins v. Smith,

539 U.S. 510, 534 (2003) (“Our review is not circumscribed

by a state court conclusion with respect to prejudice, as

neither of the state courts below reached this prong of the

Strickland analysis.” (emphasis added)); Rompilla v. Beard,

545 U.S. 374, 390 (2005) (“Because the state courts found the

representation adequate, they never reached the issue of

prejudice, and so we examine this element of the Strickland

claim de novo.” (emphasis added) (internal citations

omitted)); Porter v. McCollum, 130 S. Ct. 447, 452 (2009)

(“Because the state court did not decide whether Porter’s

counsel was deficient, we review this element of Porter’s

Strickland claim de novo.” (emphasis added)). Nor has the

Supreme Court limited this reasoning to Strickland claims. In

Cone v. Bell, 556 U.S. 449 (2009), the petitioner raised a

claim under Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83 (1963), in his

federal habeas petition. The state habeas court dismissed the

claim based on a factual determination that the Supreme

Court held was erroneous. Id. at 466–69. Turning to the

merits of the claim, the Supreme Court stated:

Because the Tennessee courts did not reach

the merits of Cone’s Brady claim, federal

habeas review is not subject to the deferential

standard that applies under AEDPA to “any

claim that was adjudicated on the merits in

State court proceedings.” 28 U.S.C.

§ 2254(d). Instead, the claim is reviewed de

novo. See, e.g., Rompilla v. Beard, 545 U.S.

374, 390, 125 S. Ct. 2456, 162 L.Ed.2d 360

(2005) (de novo review where state courts did

not reach prejudice prong under Strickland v.

Washington, 466 U.S. 668, 104 S. Ct. 2052,

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AYALA V. WONG 23

80 L.Ed.2d 674 (1984)); Wiggins v. Smith,

539 U.S. 510, 534, 123 S. Ct. 2527, 156

L.Ed.2d 471 (2003) (same).

Id. at 472 (emphasis added). Again, even though the state

court was silent with respect to the merits of Cone’s Brady

claim, the Supreme Court did not presume that the claim was

adjudicated on the merits. Thus, as Wiggins, Rompilla,

Porter, and Cone demonstrate, and as both Richter and

Williams have recognized, in some instances, a state court’s

silence with respect to a part of a claim should not be

interpreted as an “adjudication on the merits” on that part for

purposes of § 2254(d).

We summarize the law as set forth by the Supreme Court

as follows. There are circumstances in which, even if a state

court has denied relief overall, a state court’s silence with

respect to a fairly presented federal issue cannot be

interpreted as an “adjudication on the merits” of that issue for

purposes of § 2254(d), because the rebuttable presumption

cited in Richter and Williams is rebutted by the legal

principles involved (including the principle of constitutional

avoidance) and factual context applicable to a particular case.

See Wiggins v. Smith, 539 U.S. at 534; Rompilla v. Beard,

545 U.S. at 390; Porter v. McCollum, 130 S. Ct. 447, 452

(2009); Cone v. Bell, 556 U.S. at 472.

This is such a case. As explained earlier, the California

Supreme Court had no reason to reach Ayala’s federal

constitutional claim once it had decided that (1) the alleged

error occurred as a matter of state law, (2) the error was

harmless under the state and federal standards for harmless

error, and (3) whether or not that occurrence also violated

federal constitutional law was of no consequence.

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24 AYALA V. WONG

Furthermore, under long established legal principles, the

California Supreme Court had every reason not to decide

unnecessarily a question of federal constitutional law. Thus,

we find merit in Option 2, i.e., that the California Supreme

Court did not decide whether there was error under federal

constitutional law.

We recognize that it remains unclear whether the

California Supreme Court decision is better read as Option 1

or Option 2.5 What is clear is that Option 3—i.e., that the

California Supreme Court held that, although there was error

under state law, there was none under federal constitutional

law—is not the best, or even a plausible reading of the state

court opinion.6In this case, because the California Supreme

5 The dissent therefore misstates our holding when it claims we have

“decide[d] that the California Supreme Court did not determine whether

there was error under federal law.” Dissent at 28. That is only one of two

holdings we find possible; the other is that the Supreme Court decided that

there was federal constitutional error for the same reasons that there was

state constitutional error. It follows that it is also not true that we have

concluded, as the dissent claims, that there is “no reason” to give the

California Supreme Court decision § 2254(d) deference. As explained

supra at 15 n. 4, if the California Supreme Court held that there was

federal constitutional error — Option 1 — we might give this holding

§ 2254(d) deference, although the question of what level of deference to

afford a finding in favor of petitioner is a question of first impression that

we need not decide here.

6

In other words, because Wheeler is Batson-plus, and because its

Wheeler holding relied on Batson case law, it is impossible that the

California Supreme Court found no Batson error on the merits while

finding Wheeler error on the merits. It either found Batson error or did not

reach the federal claim. Therefore, there is either no merits decision

demanding deference or a merits decision favoring Ayala. The latter

possibility is unchartered territory, but, regardless, we review under a

standard no less favorable to Ayala than de novo.

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AYALA V. WONG 25

Court found error under state law by citing to federal cases

relying on federal law and because it “noted” that there might

have been a violation of federal law, Ayala, 6 P.3d at 202–04,

Option 3 is a wholly implausible reading of the California

Supreme Court decision.7 Accordingly, we have no reason to

give § 2254(d) deference to such a holding in evaluating

Ayala’s claim. (As noted supra in Part II, we will discuss in

Part IV the question whether the California Supreme Court’s

determination that any error was harmless was erroneous.)

7 Even the dissent struggles to argue that Option 3 is the best reading.

First, it states that the California Supreme Court “rejected” Ayala’s federal

claim. Dissent at 81. Then, suddenly less confident, the dissent argues

only that “[t]here may be some question as to whether the California

Supreme Court actually found that there was federal error.” Id. Finally,

backing away from its original claim even more, the dissent seems to

endorse Option 1, suggesting that the Supreme Court found that there was

federal constitutional error: “The California Supreme Court’s evaluation

of the Batson/Wheeler issue was clear and concise. It held that ‘it was

error to exclude defendant from participating in the hearings on the

Wheeler motions.’” Dissent at 83 (citingAyala, 6 P.3d at 203). The dissent

accuses us of “admitting” that the California Supreme Court cited both

Batson and Thompson in making this “clear” finding of Wheeler error. Id.

(citing Ayala, P.3d at 203). Of course we admit this; our argument is that

because the California Supreme Court cited Batson and Thompson in

finding state constitutional error, the court likely found federal

constitutional error as well. It is the dissent’s position that is perplexing:

while acknowledging that the California Supreme Court cited federal

cases in holding for Ayala on his claim of state constitutional error, it

concludes that the court “implicitly reject[ed]” Ayala’s federal

constitutional error claim. Dissent at 83–84. Given Williams’s instruction

that a state court’s citation to federal cases in deciding a state claim

“shows that [it] underst[ands] itself to be deciding a question with federal

constitutional dimensions,” and given that the federal cases the California

Supreme Court cited deemed analogous conduct to constitute federal

constitutional error, the dissent’s reading that these same cases compel the

conclusion that the conduct here is not federal constitutional error makes

little sense. See Williams, 133 S. Ct. at 1098.

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26 AYALA V. WONG

2.

Having determined that only Options 1 and 2 are

plausible readings of the California Supreme Court decision,

we proceed to review de novo Ayala’s claim that his

exclusion from stages two and three of the Batson

proceedings violated the federal constitution.8

Under de novo review, it is clear that it was federal

constitutional error to exclude both Ayala and his counsel

from stages two and three of the Batson proceedings. As the

California Supreme Court recognized, our circuit had already

held in United States v. Thompson, 827 F.2d 1254 (9th Cir.

1987) that, in the absence of a “compelling justification”

(e.g., the disclosure of trial strategy) for conducting ex parte

Batson proceedings, such exclusions violate federal

constitutional law. Id. at 1258–59. Here, the California

Supreme Court concluded – and neither party to this appeal

disputes – that there was no such compelling justification for

conducting ex parte Batson proceedings, as “no matters of

trial strategy were revealed” by the prosecutor. Ayala, 6 P.3d

at 261–62. As such, Ayala’s claim is controlled byThompson,

and we conclude that federal constitutional error occurred

when Ayala and his lawyer were excluded from stages two

and three of the Batson proceedings.9

8 As discussed supra at 15 fn. 4, there are three possible standards of

review that could apply to the California Supreme Court’s decision on

federal constitutional error. Because, under the circumstances ofthis case,

de novo review is the most searching of the three, we need not review the

decision under the other two standards.

9 Part of our reason for brevity in our analysis of Ayala’s claim under de

novo review is that his case is clearly controlled by Thompson. Another

reason is that our analysis in Part V, in which we reject the state’s Teague

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AYALA V. WONG 27

B.

Ayala also claims that the state’s loss of an overwhelming

majority of the jury questionnaires deprived him of a record

adequate for appeal and thus violated his federal due process

rights. Although less clear than with Ayala’s first federal

constitutional claim, the California Supreme Court also

decided this claim on the basis of harmless error only. Ayala,

6 P.3d at 270 (“Thus, even if there was federal error, it was

harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.”). Accordingly, for the

reasons explained supra Section III.A.1, we proceed with de

novo review.

As the California Supreme Court recognized, Ayala has

a due process right to a record sufficient to allow him a fair

and full appeal of his conviction. Id. at 208 (citing People v.

Alvarez, 14 Cal. 4th 155, 196 n.8 (1996)). If a state provides

for a direct appeal as of right from a criminal conviction, it

must also provide “certain minimum safeguards necessary to

make that appeal ‘adequate and effective.’” Evitts v. Lucey,

469 U.S. 387, 392 (1985) (quoting Griffin v. Illinois, 351 U.S.

12, 20 (1956)); see also Coe v. Thurman, 922 F.2d 528, 530

(9th Cir. 1990) (“Where a state guarantees the right to a direct

appeal, as California does, the state is required to make that

appeal satisfy the Due Process Clause.”).

In Boyd v. Newland, we applied these principles in

granting the habeas petition of an indigent defendant who had

been denied a copy of his voir dire transcript because the state

court had, in violation of clearly established federal law,

determined that the transcript was not necessary to his Batson

argument, explains further why Ayala suffered a constitutional violation

in this case.

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appeal. 467 F.3d 1139 (9th Cir. 2006). We held that “all

defendants . . . have a right to have access to the tools which

would enable them to develop their plausible Batson claims

through comparative juror analysis.” Id. at 1150. It follows

that if the state’s loss of the questionnaires deprived Ayala of

the ability to meaningfully appeal the denial of his

Batson claim, he was deprived of due process.10

This conclusion is not called into question by Briggs v.

Grounds, 682 F.3d 1165 (9th Cir. 2012), cited in the dissent.

Dissent at 103. In Briggs, the petitioner had complete access

to the juror questionnaires during the course of his state

appeal. In fact, he relied heavily on them in presenting a

comparative juror analysis to support his Batson claim.

682 F.3d at 1171. Thus Briggs’s due process rights were not

implicated. The language cited by the dissent is lifted from

a section of the opinion discussing whether, because those

questionnaires were not included in the federal court record,

we should credit the petitioner’s characterization of those

questionnaires over the state court’s characterization. Briggs

is irrelevant for our purposes, i.e., whether Ayala’s due

process rights were implicated when California lost the juror

questionnaires, thus rendering them unavailable for his state

court appeal.

10 The dissent ignores the holding of Boyd and instead plucks the words

“voir dire transcript” out of the opinion to argue that only a voir dire

transcript is necessary for comparative juror analysis. Dissent at 101–03. 

If our dissenting colleague believes that jury questionnaires are not tools

for comparative juror analysis, we point her to Miller-El v. Dretke (MillerEl II), 545 U.S. 231, 256–57 (2005) and Kesser v. Cambra, 465 F.3d 351,

360 (9th Cir. 2006) (en banc), both of which utilized juror questionnaires

in comparative juror analysis.

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AYALA V. WONG 29

Ayala is entitled to relief on this claim only if the loss of

the questionnaires was prejudicial in se or if it in conjunction

with the Batson error discussed supra served to deprive him

of a meaningful appeal. Id.; see also Brecht v. Abrahamson,

507 U.S. 619, 623 (1993). “[I]n analyzing prejudice . . . , this

court has recognized the importance of considering the

cumulative effect of multiple errors and not simply

conducting a balkanized, issue-by-issue harmless error

review.” Daniels v. Woodford, 428 F.3d 1181, 1214 (9th Cir.

2005) (quoting Thomas v. Hubbard, 273 F.3d 1164, 1178 (9th

Cir. 2001)). Here, the loss of the questionnaires increased the

prejudice that Ayala suffered as a result of the exclusion of

defense counsel from Batson steps two and three, as it further

undermined his ability to show that Batson had been violated. 

Accordingly, in determining whether Ayala is entitled to

relief, we evaluate the prejudice caused by the loss of the

questionnaires in conjunction with the harm caused by

excluding defense counsel from the Batson proceedings. As

we will explain immediately below, the analysis under Brecht

regarding the Batson error demonstrates that the exclusion of

Ayala and his counsel from the second and third stages of the

Batson inquiry is sufficiently prejudicial to require reversal

for that reason alone.11

IV.

The California Supreme Court held that Ayala was not

prejudiced by the trial court’s exclusion of the defense from

stages two and three of the Batson proceedings, by the state’s

 

11 Ayala also asserts that there is an Eighth Amendment right to appeal

— and to a record adequate for appeal — in a capital case. See Whitmore

v. Arkansas, 495 U.S. 149, 168 (1990) (Marshall, J., dissenting). We need

not decide this question here.

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loss of the vast majority of the jury questionnaires, or by the

two errors considered together. The Court declared itself

“confident that the challenged jurors were excluded for

proper, race-neutral reasons,” Ayala, 6 P.3d at 204, concluded

that the exclusion of defense counsel was “harmless beyond

a reasonable doubt,” id. (citing Chapman v. California,

386 U.S. 18, 24 (1967)), and held that despite the loss of the

questionnaires the record was “sufficiently complete for [it]

to be able to conclude that [the struck jurors] were not

challenged and excused on the basis of forbidden group bias.” 

Id. at 208.

We now address these same questions, and hold that

Brecht v. Abrahamson, 507 U.S. 619 (1993), requires us to

reach a different conclusion.

A.

Ayala claims, first, that exclusion of defense counsel from

the Batson proceedings necessarily represented structural

error, and that he is entitled to relief without further inquiry

into whether he was prejudiced. The state court’s conclusion

that the error here was not structural — a conclusion implicit

in its application of the Chapman harmless error standard to

evaluate whether Ayala had suffered prejudice — is subject

to review under the deferential standard of § 2254(d). See

Byrd v. Lewis, 566 F.3d 855, 862 (9th Cir. 2009).

The Supreme Court has defined as “structural” an error

that affects “the framework within which the trial proceeds,

rather than simply an error in the trial process itself.” 

Arizona v. Fulminante, 499 U.S. 279, 310 (1991). Where this

line is drawn is not always clear. Compare, e.g., Waller v.

Georgia, 467 U.S. 39, 49 n.9 (1984) (violation of the right to

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AYALA V. WONG 31

public trial requires automatic reversal), with, e.g., Rushen v.

Spain, 464 U.S. 114, 117–18 & n.2 (1983) (denial of a

defendant’s right to be present at trial is subject to harmless

error review). While a violation of Batson is itself structural

error, there is no Supreme Court decision addressing whether

the exclusion of defense counsel from Batson proceedings

constitutes structural error.

Ayala contends that the state court’s decision represents

an unreasonable application of the Supreme Court’s clearly

established rule that “no showing of prejudice need be made

‘where assistance of counsel has been denied entirely or

during a critical stage of the proceedings.’” Brief of Appellant

at 22 (quoting Mickens v. Taylor, 535 U.S. 162, 166 (2002));

see also United States v. Cronic, 466 U.S. 648, 659 n.25

(1984).12 The use of the phrase “critical stage” in this excerpt

can be somewhat deceptive: although the Batson proceedings

represented a “critical stage” in the sense that Ayala had the

right to counsel during those proceedings, they were not

necessarily the sort of “critical stage” at which the

deprivation of that right constituted structural error. See

United States v. Owen, 407 F.3d 222, 227 (4th Cir. 2005). As

the Fourth Circuit has explained, the statements in Mickens

and Cronic

rely on the Supreme Court’s earlier usage of

the phrase “critical stage,” in cases such as

Hamilton v. [Alabama, 368 U.S. 52 (1961)]

and White [v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 59 (1963)

(per curiam)] to refer narrowly to those

12 As the state observes, although Mickens postdates the California

Supreme Court’s decision, the opinion simply restates the rule set forth 18

years earlier in Cronic.

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proceedings both at which the Sixth

Amendment right to counsel attaches and at

which denial of counsel necessarily

undermines the reliability of the entire

criminal proceeding. . . . [T]he Supreme Court

has subsequently used the phrase “critical

stage,” in cases such as [United States v.]

Wade [, 388 U.S. 218 (1967)] and Coleman

[v. Alabama, 399 U.S. 1 (1970)], in a broader

sense, to refer to all proceedings at which the

Sixth Amendment right to counsel attaches --

including those at which the denial of such is

admittedly subject to harmless-error analysis.

Id. at 228 (emphasis omitted).

In Musladin v. Lamarque, we held that the “clearly

established” rule of Cronic is that a “critical stage” where the

deprivation of counsel constitutes structural error is one that

holds “significant consequences for the accused.” 555 F.3d

830, 839 (9th Cir. 2009) (quoting Bell v. Cone, 535 U.S. 685,

695–96 (2002)). We identified as providing guidance in this

inquiry Supreme Court decisions holding an overnight trial

recess and closing arguments to be two such critical stages. 

Id. at 839–40 (citing Geders v. United States, 425 U.S. 80

(1976) and Herring v. New York, 422 U.S. 853 (1975)).

Given this fairly ambiguous standard, it was not an

unreasonable application of clearlyestablished federal law for

the California Supreme Court to conclude that the exclusion

of the defense from Batson steps two and three does not

amount to a deprivation of the right to counsel such that the

likelihood that the jurywas chosen by unconstitutional means

is “so high that a case-by-case inquiry is unnecessary.” 

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AYALA V. WONG 33

Mickens, 535 U.S. at 166. As the state points out, it would be

somewhat incongruous to conclude that the exclusion of

counsel during Batson proceedings is a defect in the very

structure of the trial if the same exclusion would be

permissible were there some reason to keep the prosecution’s

justifications confidential. Thus, a “fairminded jurist[],”

Harrington v. Richter, 131 S. Ct. 770, 786 (2011) (quoting

Yarborough v. Alvarado, 541 U.S. 652, 664 (2004)), might

conclude that Batson steps two and three are not a Cronictype “critical stage.” Even if we would hold the error to be

structural were we to consider the issue de novo, we cannot

say that as the Supreme Court has construed AEDPA the state

court’s contraryconclusion was unreasonable. See Musladin,

555 F.3d at 842–43.

B.

Ayala claims next that, even if the trial court’s exclusion

of the defense was not the sort of constitutional error in se

that requires that we presume that in every exclusion case

prejudice ensues, it was prejudicial in his case, both in solo

and when considered in conjunction with the loss of the

questionnaires. In evaluating whether a trial error prejudiced

a state habeas petitioner, we must apply the standard set forth

in Brecht v. Abrahamson, determining whether the error had

a “substantial and injurious effect or influence in determining

the jury’s verdict.” 507 U.S. 619, 623 (1993) (quoting

Kotteakos v. United States, 328 U.S. 750, 776 (1946)). We

“apply the Brecht test without regard for the state court’s

harmlessness determination.” Pulido v. Chrones, 629 F.3d

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34 AYALA V. WONG

1007, 1012 (9th Cir. 2010) (citing Fry v. Pliler, 551 U.S. 112,

121–22 (2007)).13

The Brecht standard has been described as follows:

[I]f one cannot say, with fair assurance, after

pondering all that happened without stripping

the erroneous action from the whole, that the

judgment was not substantially swayed by the

error, it is impossible to conclude that

substantial rights were not affected. The

inquiry cannot be merely whether there was

enough to support the result, apart from the

phase affected by the error. It is rather, even

so, whether the error itself had substantial

influence.

13 If this appeal had come before us prior to the Supreme Court’s

decision in Fry, we would have instead asked whether the state court’s

determination that any error was harmless under Chapman was contrary

to, or an unreasonable application, of federal law. See Inthavong v.

Lamarque, 420 F.3d 1055, 1059 (9th Cir. 2005). Fry clarified, however,

that Brecht is the harmless error standard to be applied in such

circumstances because the Brechtstandard “subsumes” the “more liberal”

§ 2254(d)/Chapman standard. See Fry, 551 U.S. at 120; Merolillo v.

Yates, 663 F.3d 444, 454 (9th Cir. 2011). In other words, if a federal

habeas court determines that the Brecht standard has been met, it also

necessarily determines to be an unreasonable application of Chapman a

state court’s conclusion that the error was harmless beyond a reasonable

doubt. In holding that Ayala has demonstrated his entitlement to relief

under Brecht, we therefore also hold to be an unreasonable application of

Chapman the California Supreme Court’s conclusion that Ayala was not

prejudiced by the exclusion of the defense during Batson steps two and

three or by the loss of the questionnaires. See Merolillo, 663 F.3d at

458–59.

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AYALA V. WONG 35

Merolillo v. Yates, 663 F.3d 444, 454 (9th Cir. 2011) (quoting

Kotteakos, 328 U.S. at 765). “Where the record is so evenly

balanced that a judge ‘feels himself in virtual equipoise as to

the harmlessness of the error’ and has ‘grave doubt about

whether an error affected a jury [substantially and

injuriously], the judge must treat the error as if it did so.’” Id.

(quoting O’Neal v. McAninch, 513 U.S. 432, 435, 437–38

(1995)) (alteration in original) (internal quotations omitted).14

14 The dissent contends that Brecht no longer provides the proper

standard of review for assessing prejudice, arguing instead that a writ may

issue only if we determine that “no fairminded jurist could find that the

exclusion of defense counsel and the loss of questionnaires did not prevent

Ayala from prevailing on his Batson claim.” Dissent at 99–100. The

dissent’s only authority for its conclusion is Harrington v. Richter,

131 S. Ct. 770, 786 (2011), which the dissent suggests refined the Brecht

test. Dissent at 99–100.

The dissent clearly errs in applying Richter to prejudice analysis

under AEDPA. In Fry, 551 U.S. 112, the Supreme Court held that Brecht

is the proper test for prejudice analysis under AEDPA. In Richter, handed

down just four years later, the Supreme Court did not once mention Fry

or Brecht. Furthermore, the Court’s reference to “fairminded jurist” was

not in the context of reviewing a state court’s prejudice determination but

rather in the context of whether a state court’s determination regarding

constitutional error was unreasonable. 131 S. Ct. at 785. (Here, as

explained supra, the state court was silent on the question of error, and

thus only prejudice is at issue.) The dissent thus seems willing to

conclude that the Supreme Court radically changed Brecht, a nearly twodecade old precedent — a case with central import in virtually all federal

habeas adjudication, reaffirmed just five years ago in Fry — without even

a mention of that oft-cited case. There is no legal basis for the dissent’s

conclusion that a case cited almost 10,000 times to determine prejudice in

habeas cases was sub silentio drastically overhauled in a discussion

unrelated to prejudice. The dissent’s reference to Pinholster is equally

unpersuasive. In that case, as in Richter, the Court did not use the

language “fairminded jurist” in reviewing a state court’s prejudice

determination. Cullen v. Pinholster, 131 S. Ct. 1388, 1408 (2011).

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36 AYALA V. WONG

We conclude that Ayala has met the Brecht standard. The

prejudice he suffered was the deprivation of the opportunity

to develop, present, and likely prevail on his Batson claim. 

Had he prevailed on that claim, and shown that the

prosecution acted upon impermissible considerations of race

in striking even one of the seven black or Hispanic jurors it

struck, then, as the state acknowledged in oral argument

before this court, we would be compelled to reverse Ayala’s

conviction because his entire trial would have been infected

by this violation of the Constitution. See Vasquez v. Hillery,

474 U.S. 254, 263–64 (1986); Boyd, 467 F.3d at 1150. The

question, then, is whether Ayala could have made this

Furthermore, because Richter and Pinholster were ineffective

assistance of counsel cases, the Court had no reason to apply Brecht.

Strickland, not Brecht, provides the proper prejudice standard for

ineffective assistance of counsel claims. See Musladin v. Lamarque,

555 F.3d 830, 834 (9th Cir. 2009) (“[W]here a habeas petition governed

by AEDPA alleges ineffective assistance of counsel under [Strickland],

we apply Strickland’s prejudice standard and do not engage in a separate

analysis applying the Brecht standard.”).

Additionally, in the thirtymonths since Richter was handed down, we

have repeatedly applied the traditional Brecht test to assess prejudice in

habeas cases. E.g., Merolillo, 663 F.3d at 454; Ybarra v. McDaniel,

656 F.3d 984, 995 (9th Cir. 2011); United States v. Rodrigues, 678 F.3d

693, 695 (9th Cir. 2012). In some cases, we have cited Richter in

analyzing constitutional error but then, properly, applied the traditional

Brecht test when determining prejudice. E.g., Ocampo v. Vail, 649 F.3d

1098, 1106 (9th Cir. 2011); Schneider v. McDaniel, 674 F.3d 1144,

1149–50 (9th Cir. 2012). Thus, even if we believed that the dissent were

correct that Richter rewrote the test for prejudice (a conclusion that is

wholly withoutsupport and that we unequivocally reject), this three-judge

court, like all others, is nevertheless required to apply Brecht as it was

(and is), because such is the law of the circuit. Lacking support in both

Supreme Court and Ninth Circuit case law, the dissent’s pronouncement

simply amounts to a preference that the prejudice standard under AEDPA

should be far more onerous than current law provides.

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AYALA V. WONG 37

showing but for the state’s constitutional errors. If we cannot

say that the exclusion of defense counsel with or without the

loss of the questionnaires likely did not prevent Ayala from

prevailing on his Batson claim, then we must grant the writ.

Here, it is probable that the state’s errors precluded Ayala

from turning what is a very plausible Batson claim — the

challenge to the prosecution’s strikes of all minority jurors —

into a winning one by preventing defense counsel from

performing the two “crucial functions” we identified in

Thompson. First, Ayala’s counsel could have pointed out

where the prosecution’s purported justifications might be

pretextual or indicate bad faith. Although the trial judge may

have been able to “detect some of these deficiencies by

himself, . . . there might be arguments [he] would overlook”

because he was “unassisted by an advocate.” Thompson,

827 F.2d at 1260–61. The jury selection process took over

three months and comprises more than six thousand pages of

the record. The trial judge, attempting to evaluate the

prosecution’s reasons for striking the jurors in light of this

massive amount of information, was almost certain to forget

or overlook key facts, but could have been substantially aided

by the presence of participants in the process adverse to the

prosecution. In particular, Ayala’s lawyers could have

pointed out when the prosecutor’s proffered reason for

striking a black or Hispanic juror applied “just as well to an

otherwise-similar nonblack [or non-Hispanic] who [was]

permitted to serve.” Miller-El v. Dretke, 545 U.S. 231, 241

(2005). The Supreme Court has emphasized the importance

of this sort of “comparative juror analysis” to determining

whether a prosecutor’s reasons for challenging a minority

juror were pretextual. Id.; see also Snyder v. Louisiana,

552 U.S. 472, 483–85 (2008). Although Ayala can — and

does — still raise some of these arguments on appeal, he was

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38 AYALA V. WONG

deprived of the crucial opportunity to present them to the

institutional actor best positioned to evaluate them. As the

Supreme Court has observed, appellate courts must accord

deference to “trial court findings on the issue of

discriminatory intent” because “the finding largely will turn

on evaluation of credibility.” Miller-El v. Cockrell, 537 U.S.

322, 339 (2003) (quoting Hernandez v. New York, 500 U.S.

352, 366 (1991) (plurality opinion)) (internal quotation marks

and citations omitted). Because, after finding a prima facie

case of a Batson violation, the trial court was not made aware

of key facts that could have influenced its credibility

determination, there is substantial reason to doubt that

Ayala’s Batson challenge was properly denied.

Second, Ayala’s counsel could have “preserve[d] for the

record, and possible appeal, crucial facts bearing on the

judge’s decision.” Thompson, 827 F.2d at 1261. We cannot

know many of the facts material to whether the prosecution’s

stated reasons were false, discriminatory, or pretextual

because defense counsel was not able to preserve relevant

facts regarding prospective jurors’ physical appearances,

behavior, or other characteristics. Although the trial judge

could have been aware of these facts, an appellate court “can

only serve [its] function when the record is clear as to the

relevant facts, or when defense counsel fails to point out any

such facts after learning of the prosecutor’s reasons.” Id.; see

also United States v. Alcantar, 897 F.2d 436, 438 (9th Cir.

1990) (reversing a defendant’s conviction where the Batson

proceedings conducted below left the defense unable “to

adequately challenge the prosecution’s reasons as pretextual”

and left the reviewing court uncertain as to whether the

prosecution had, in fact, violated Batson).

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AYALA V. WONG 39

This second deficiency is greatly augmented by the loss

of the jury questionnaires. The only questionnaires that have

been preserved are those of the seated and alternate jurors.15

We are unable to evaluate the legitimacy of some of the

prosecution’s proffered reasons for striking the black and

Hispanic jurors because they referred to questionnaires that

are now lost. The loss of the questionnaires also leaves us

lacking potentially crucial information about certain

individuals who were neither the subject of Ayala’s Batson

challenge nor ultimately served as jurors.16 Thus, we cannot

perform a fair comparative juror analysis as required by

Batson. See Miller-El v. Dretke, 545 U.S. at 241.

Even so, we have substantial reason to question the

motivation of the prosecution in engaging in its peremptory

challenges of the black and Hispanic jurors. In conducting

our inquiry, we must keep in mind the strength of Ayala’s

prima facie case. “[T]he statistical evidence alone raises

some debate as to whether the prosecution acted with a

15 There are also three other questionnaires out of more than 200 which

were somehow located, but have no particular significance with respect to

a comparative juror analysis.

16 The state and the dissent both appear to presume that the only relevant

comparisons in a comparative juror analysis are between the struck jurors

and the jurors who are ultimately seated, but Miller-El made clear that the

otherwise-similar jurors to whom the struck jurors can be compared

include those “permitted to serve” by the prosecution but ultimately struck

by the defense. See, e.g., Miller-El v. Dretke, 545 U.S. at 244–45

(comparing a struck juror to a juror not challenged by the prosecution who

was later challenged by the defense). This, of course, makes perfect

sense: some of these jurors were not struck by the defense until after the

prosecution had passed them for several rounds, and the “underlying

question is not what the defense thought about these jurors,” but what the

prosecution did. Id. at 245 n.4.

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40 AYALA V. WONG

race-based reason when striking prospective jurors.”

Miller-El v. Cockrell, 537 U.S. at 342. That the prosecution

struck each of the seven black or Hispanic jurors available for

challenge establishes a basis for significant doubt of its

motives: “[h]appenstance is unlikely to produce this

disparity.” Id.

Perhaps more important, the analysis of the prosecution’s

motives that is possible on the partial record before us

demonstrates that many of its stated reasons for striking the

seven black and Hispanic jurors were or may have been false,

discriminatory, or pretextual. There are good reasons to think

that race motivated the prosecution’s strikes of at least three,

if not more, jurors: Olanders D., Gerardo O. and Robert M.17

 

17 Although the record provides somewhat less reason to conclude that

the prosecution’s justifications for the strikes of the four other black and

Hispanic jurors were pretextual, race may also have played a substantial

role in these challenges. For example, Ayala might have been able to

show that the prosecution violated Batson when it struck Hispanic juror

George S. in the final round of peremptory challenges. The prosecution

gave five reasons for striking George S. The first reason — that his

application to be a police officer some twenty years earlier had been

rejected — applied equally to seated white juror Charles C. The second

reason— that he had indicated some discomfort with the death penalty —

did not significantly distinguish him froma number ofseated white jurors. 

See infra Section V.B.2. The third reason — that he had been a “holdout”

on a prior jury — could have been called into question had defense

counsel been able to point out that the jury on which George S. had been

a “holdout” was a civil one, that the issue in dispute had been the

assessment of damages, and that unanimity was not required. The fourth

reason — that he had written in his questionnaire that the parties probably

would not want him to serve as a juror — overlapped entirely with the

third reason, as George S. had explained that he wrote that the parties

might not want him as a juror because he had been a civil jury “holdout.” 

The fifth and final reason — that he placed excessive emphasis on the

Bible in his questionnaire — cannot be evaluated at all because the

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AYALA V. WONG 41

We “cannot say, with fair assurance, after pondering all that

happened without stripping the erroneous action from the

whole,” Kotteakos, 328 U.S. at 765, that Ayala was not

prevented from showing that the prosecution struck at least

one of these jurors because of his race.

1. Olanders D.

Olanders D. was one of two black jurors whom the

prosecution struck in the first round of peremptory

challenges. During the in camera hearing that followed the

defense’s Batson motion, the prosecutor explained that he

struck Olanders D. because: (1) he might not be able to vote

for the death penalty, as he had written in his questionnaire

that he did not believe in it, and he had indicated in

questioning that his view had recently changed; (2) his

answers to voir dire questions often were not fully

responsive; (3) his questionnaire responses had been “poor”;

and (4) he might lack the “ability to fit in with a cohesive

group of 12 people.” The trial judge rejected one of the four

proffered reasons — his purported inability “to fit in with a

cohesive group of 12 people.” The presence of defense

counsel, and the preservation of the questionnaires, could

have permitted Ayala to call into question all three of the

reasons that the court accepted as legitimate.

First, in response to the prosecution’s claim that it was

concerned that Olanders D. would hesitate to impose the

death penalty, defense counsel could have pointed to seated

white jurors who had expressed similar or greater hesitancy. 

One seated juror in particular was indistinguishable from

questionnaire has been lost, along with those of others whom the

prosecutor might have passed.

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42 AYALA V. WONG

Olanders D. in this regard. Olanders D. had (apparently)

written in his questionnaire that he did not believe in the

death penalty. Ana L., a seated white juror, made almost

preciselythe same statement in her questionnaire, writing that

she “probably would not be able to vote for the death

penalty.” Also, Olanders D. later said during voir dire that he

had reconsidered his views, and affirmed that he could be

“personally responsible for being on a jury and actually

voting for the death penalty.” Once again, Ana L. said almost

precisely the same thing: she stated that she had since

rethought her position, and affirmed that she could “actually

vote” for the death penalty.

18

Second, in answer to the prosecution’s purported concern

that Olanders D.’s answers on voir dire were not always fully

responsive, defense counsel could have questioned the

validity of this assessment, suggested that his answers were

in fact fully responsive, and pointed to seated white jurors

whose answers were less responsive than Olanders D.’s. Our

review of the voir dire transcript reveals nothing that supports

the prosecution’s claim: Olanders D.’s answers were

responsive and complete. In order to make this fact clear to

the trial judge, defense counsel could once again have

compared Olanders D. to seated juror Ana L. Ana L. had, for

example, responded “That is correct” to a question asking

“why” she would prefer not to sit as a juror, stared blankly at

defense counsel in response to a question on the presumption

18 Other seated white jurors to whom defense counsel could have pointed

in order to show to be pretextual the prosecution’s stated concern that

Olanders D. would not be willing to impose the death penalty include

Dorothy C., Dorothea L., Dorothy H. and Leona B. See infra Section

V.B.2.

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AYALA V. WONG 43

of innocence, and failed, at various points, to respond directly

to yes or no questions.

Third, we cannot know exactly what arguments defense

counsel could have made to undermine the prosecution’s final

reason for striking Olanders D. — that his questionnaire

responses were “poor,” and demonstrated his inability to

express himself. Because Olanders D.’s questionnaire has

been lost, we may only speculate as to its contents. If the

reason his answers were “poor” was that they were not

particularly detailed, the defense could have compared his

questionnaire to that of Ana L., whose answers were brief and

often incomplete, or to that of Charles G., a seated white juror

whose responses to the 77 questions were rarely longer than

two or three words apiece. If the reason his answers were

poor was that they reflected an inability to think clearly or

express complex thoughts, the defense could have compared

his questionnaire to that of Thomas B., a seated white juror

who, for example, opined of street gangs, “I feel the only

media coverage they get is bad, however, those whom do

constructive events usually seek out positive media

coverage.” Further, this is an obvious instance in which the

defense is prejudiced by being unable to compare Olanders

D.’s answers to those of prospective white jurors who were

accepted by the prosecution but struck by the defense, and

whose questionnaires have been lost.19It is also, of course,

19 For example, Elizabeth S., who was in all likelihood white, was seated

as an alternate on a panel accepted by the prosecution — which never used

its sixth and final peremptory challenge in the selection of the alternate

jurors — but was later struck by the defense. Her questionnaire, which

was lost, might have been particularly valuable to Ayala for comparative

juror analysis if her written responses were anything like those she

delivered during voir dire. Consider the following exchange between the

trial court and Elizabeth S.:

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44 AYALA V. WONG

possible that Olanders D.’s answers were not poor at all. We

have no way of knowing.

Thus, one of the four reasons given by the prosecution for

striking this prospective juror was determined to be without

merit by the trial judge; two failed to distinguish the juror

whatsoever from at least one seated white juror; and the

fourth and final reason the prosecution gave for striking the

juror cannot be evaluated because his questionnaire was lost,

as were those of the prospective white jurors struck by the

defense. Given the objective reasons that we have even on

this record to question the validity of the prosecution’s

explanations for striking Olanders D., we simply cannot

conclude that it is likely that, if the defense had been present

Q: Did you have an opportunity to review the summary

of legal issues and preliminary questions? This was a

packet of material in the juror’s lounge.

A: No.

Q: You didn’t read it?

A. Not today. I read the papers that they gave me in

the office.

Q. Today?

A. Yeah.

Q. Okay. That was the summary of legal issues and

preliminary questions?

A. Yeah, Yeah.

Perhaps because of this and similar exchanges, she was later asked if she

had a hearing problem, which she did not.

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AYALA V. WONG 45

during the Batson proceedings and if the lost questionnaires

had been preserved, Ayala would not have been able to show

that the prosecution’s stated reasons for striking Olanders D.

were pretextual, and that the actual reasons were racial.

2. Gerardo O.

Gerardo O. was one of two Hispanic jurors the

prosecution challenged during the second round of

peremptories. He was struck, the prosecutor explained in the

subsequent ex parte proceeding, because: (1) he was

“illiterate,” and had needed the questionnaire to be translated

for him; (2) he “appeared not to fit in with anyone else,” was

“standoffish,” with “dress and mannerisms . . . not in keeping

with the other jurors,” and “did not appear to be socializing

or mixing with any of the other jurors”; and (3) his voir dire

responses suggested that he was not sure “if he could take

someone’s life,” and that he “felt a little shaky as far as his

responsibilities in this case.” The trial judge concluded that

the “record document[ed] the factors that were indicated” by

the prosecutor and accepted his explanation.

Once again, had the defense not been excluded from the

Batson proceedings, it likely could have called into question

all of the prosecution’s stated reasons for striking Gerardo O. 

Defense counsel could have first argued that one reason given

— that Gerardo O. was illiterate — was itself indicative of

the prosecution’s discriminatoryintent. Although Gerardo O.

did need someone to fill out the questionnaire for him, the

record reveals that he was not, in fact, illiterate, but simply

had difficulty writing in English. Gerardo O. had been born

in Mexico and was not a native English speaker, but he had

graduated from high school and attended college in the

United States, and was perfectly capable of reading the

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46 AYALA V. WONG

summary of legal issues that was given to prospective jurors

before voir dire questioning. As he explained at voir dire, he

did not fill out the questionnaire himself because he was

concerned about his English spelling. The prosecution’s

purported reason for striking Gerardo O., then, was directly

related to his status as someone who spoke Spanish as his

first language. Thus, as the Supreme Court observed in a

similar circumstance, “the prosecutor’s frank admission that

his ground for excusing th[is] juror[] related to [his] ability to

speak and understand Spanish raised a plausible, though not

a necessary, inference that language might be a pretext for

what in fact [was a] race-based peremptory challenge[].” 

Hernandez, 500 U.S. at 363 (plurality opinion). Defense

counsel’s presence was necessary to point out the potential

inferences to the trial judge and urge the judge to adopt the

one most appropriate here.

An inference of racial bias might also have been drawn

from the prosecutor’s claim that Gerardo O. was challenged

because he did not dress or act like other jurors, and did not

mix or socialize with them. It is likely that Gerardo O.’s

dress and mannerisms were distinctly Hispanic. Perhaps in

the late 1980s Hispanic males in San Diego County were

more likely than members of other racial or ethnic groups in

the area to wear a particular style or color of shirt, and

Gerardo O. was wearing such a shirt (and for this reason did

not “fit in,” in the prosecutor’s mind, with the other jurors). 

If so, and if defense counsel were able to bring this fact to the

trial court’s attention, the prosecution’s explanation that it

struck Gerardo O. because of his dress and mannerisms

would provide compelling support for Ayala’s claim that the

strike was actually racially-motivated. See id. (“[A]n

invidious discriminatory purpose may often be inferred from

the totality of the relevant facts, including the fact, if it is true,

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AYALA V. WONG 47

that the [classification] bears more heavily on one race than

another.”) (quoting Washington v. Davis, 426 U.S. 229, 242

(1976)). If present at the hearing, defense counsel could have

made a record that would have strongly supported these

claims.

Even if Gerardo O.’s clothes and behavior were in no way

correlated with his race, defense counsel might have been

able to show the prosecution’s explanation to be pretextual. 

Defense counsel might have pointed to other jurors the

prosecution had not struck who had similar characteristics —

perhaps, for example, a seated white juror had actually worn

an outfit identical to Gerardo O.’s. Defense counsel might

also have been able to challenge the factual basis for the

prosecution’s claim — perhaps, unbeknownst to the trial

judge, Gerardo O. did “socializ[e] or mix[]” with a number of

other jurors, and had even organized a dinner for some of

them at his favorite Mexican restaurant.

We can only speculate as to whether or how Ayala could

have shown this explanation for striking Gerardo O. to be

facially discriminatory, false or pretextual because we know

nothing about his dress or mannerisms, or that of the other

prospective jurors. These are exactly the sort of physical and

behavioral observations that the defense could have preserved

for the record had it been permitted to hear and respond to the

prosecution’s explanations for challenging Gerardo O. 

Although we might hope that the trial judge would have

noticed if Gerard O. had been wearing a shirt worn only by

members of the Hispanic community, or had been dressed

identically to other prospective jurors whom the prosecution

had not challenged, or had in fact been socializing with other

jurors, “we cannot affirm simply because we are confident he

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48 AYALA V. WONG

must have known what he was doing.” Thompson, 827 F.2d

at 1261.

Finally, in response to the prosecution’s third reason for

the strike — that Gerardo O. seemed reluctant to impose the

death penalty — defense counsel could have demonstrated

this reason to be pretextual through comparisons to jurors the

prosecution did not strike. Gerardo O. had stated during voir

dire that “I’m not sure if I can take someone’s life in my hand

and say . . . you know, ‘death,’ or something,” but he soon

thereafter affirmed that he “could vote for the death penalty.” 

This statement was indistinguishable from those made by a

number of seated white jurors. Dorothy C. said in voir dire

that serving as a juror in a capital case would cause her to

“worry a lot” because it was “a lot of responsibility,” gasped

when defense counsel told her that as a juror she would

“decide the sentence,” and stated, “I’ve never had to vote on

a death penalty. That might be a little bit difficult when it

came right down to it, but I’d say I’m for it.” Likewise,

Dorothy H., when asked in voir dire if she could return a

verdict of death, stated, “I don’t think it would be an easy

thing for anyone, but I don’t — I think I could do it if I felt

it was the thing to do.” Dorothea L. was even more hesitant,

saying, when asked the same question, “I think so, but I don’t

know until I have to do it.” Finally, Leona B., when asked by

the prosecutor if having the responsibility for imposing the

death penalty would “bother” her, responded, “Yes, I think

so. I think — I think one should be affected . . . by that. I

don’t think it’s anything to be taken lightly.” Certainly,

Gerardo O. expressed less hesitancy than Ana L., who had

flatly stated on her questionnaire that she “probably would

not be able to vote for the death penalty” before subsequently

changing her mind. Further, prospective white jurors

accepted by the prosecution but struck by the defense might

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AYALA V. WONG 49

have expressed similar sentiments in their jury

questionnaires. We cannot tell, because these questionnaires

have been lost.

Thus, one of the reasons given by the prosecution for

striking this prospective juror could have itself given rise to

an inference of discriminatory intent. A second reason cannot

be evaluated because defense counsel was excluded from the

Batson proceedings and could not preserve for the record

certain crucial facts. The third reason given failed to

distinguish Gerardo O. from seated white jurors the

prosecutor chose not to strike, as well as, possibly, from other

prospective white jurors struck not by the prosecution but by

the defense. Given the cause we have to question the validity

of the prosecution’s reasons that can be evaluated on this

record, we cannot say that Ayala would not have shown that

the trial court would or should have determined that the

prosecution’s strike of Gerardo O. violated Batson.

3. Robert M.

The prosecution struck Hispanic juror Robert M. in the

final round of peremptory challenges. In camera, the

prosecutor explained that he had been concerned, given

Robert M.’s response to voir dire questioning, that he might

not be willing to impose the death penalty. This concern had

been heightened by Robert M.’s mentioning the Sagon Penn

case — a case in which the defendant was found not guilty in

a second trial and the police and the district attorney’s office

were accused of misconduct. The trial judge accepted the

prosecution’s explanation, stating that, although Martinez’s

“questionnaire would tend to indicate a person that is

certainly pro the death penalty[,] . . . his answers varied

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50 AYALA V. WONG

somewhat to the extent that individually, there may well be

a legitimate concern as to whether or not he could impose it.”

Defense counsel’s presence in the Batson proceedings

was necessary to call into question the prosecution’s claim

that it struck Robert M. because of his reluctance to impose

the death penalty. Even without comparing Robert M. to

other jurors permitted to serve, this explanation is highly

suspect: Robert M. repeatedly stated during voir dire that he

believed in the death penalty and could personally vote to

impose it, and his questionnaire (which has, of course, been

lost) manifested a similar enthusiasm according to the trial

judge. Defense counsel could have brought to the trial

court’s attention that the only statement potentially raising

any question whatsoever — that voting for a death sentence

might “weigh on his conscience,” and would be a “heavy”

decision — was indistinguishable from a practical standpoint

from statements by DorothyC., who said that serving as juror

in a capital case was “a lot of responsibility” and would cause

her to “worry a lot,” DorothyH., who stated that imposing the

death penalty would not “be an easy thing for anyone,”

Dorothea L., who said she would not know if she could

impose the death penalty until she had to do it, and Leona B.,

who affirmed that this responsibility would “bother” her. 

Other prospective jurors who were struck by the defense, but

had been accepted by the prosecution, may have made

comparable statements in their questionnaires (which, again,

have been lost). Counsel could have argued that most jurors

who believed in imposing the death penalty would consider

a decision to do so a “heavy” decision that would weigh on

one’s conscience. Following counsel’s argument, the judge

might well have recognized that there is indeed rarely a

“heavier” decision a citizen is ever asked to undertake. 

Certainly, like Gerardo O., Robert M. was no more hesitant

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AYALA V. WONG 51

than Ana L., who had actually at one point stated that she

would be unable to impose the death penalty.

To the extent that the prosecution gave Robert M.’s

reference to the Sagon Penn case as a separate reason for its

challenge, defense counsel could likely have demonstrated

that this reason was pretextual. First, the entirety of the

Sagon Penn exchange was as follows:

Prosecutor: Have you followed any kind of

— any court cases in the news or come

downtown to watch any trials?

Robert M.: Well, I followed the Saigon [sic]

Penn case.

Prosecutor: All right.

Robert M. briefly mentioned the case in response to the

prosecution’s question, and he said nothing about any

accusations of police or prosecutorial misconduct.

Second, although none of the seated jurors had been asked

a similar question, one seated white juror had on his own

initiative referred to a far more controversial capital case. 

When asked to describe his feelings about the death penalty,

Douglas S. mentioned the “Harris” case, saying: “The Harris

case, which goes back . . . . I believe he’s on death row . . . I

can’t even recall the exact crimes, but I remember them to be

quite bizarre, and — and here he was, facing execution, and

I don’t know.” Douglas S. was presumably referring to

Robert Alton Harris, who at the time of Ayala’s trial was on

California’s death row, and had, in a case that was

extensively covered by the press, been tried, convicted and

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52 AYALA V. WONG

sentenced to death in San Diego. People v. Harris, 623 P.2d

240, 246 (Cal. 1981). As Harris’s case wound its way

through the state and federal courts, it generated substantial

controversy, some of which, as in the Sagon Penn case, was

related to allegations of official misconduct. See, e.g., id. at

267 (Bird, C.J., dissenting) (arguing that Harris had been

denied his right to a fair trial due to extensive and prejudicial

pretrial publicity, partially the product of the “sorry spectacle

of prosecutorial offices publicly vying with each other to

have ‘first crack’ at convicting the accused”); see also

Stephen R. Reinhardt, The Supreme Court, The Death

Penalty, and The Harris Case, 102 Yale L.J. 205, 205 & n.1

(1992) (for further description of controversy generated by

case). Douglas S.’s statement about the case — “here he was,

facing execution, and I don’t know” — suggests that this

controversy had created some doubt in his mind as to the

propriety of Harris’s conviction and sentence. Certainly,

Douglas S.’s unelicited discussion of the Harris case should

have troubled the prosecutor far more than Robert M.’s brief

direct response regarding the Sagon Penn case.

Finally, if there was any inference to draw from Robert

M.’s fleeting reference to the Sagon Penn case, it was that

Robert M. would not return a guilty verdict based on a blind

trust of the police and the prosecution who had arrested and

charged the defendant with the crime. Numerous seated

white jurors expressed similar sentiments. Douglas S., for

example, stated that the last person who had lied to his face

was a California policeman. Similarly, Charles C. said, “You

don’t change your stripes . . . when you put on a badge; and

you have to judge everybody’s testimony in a court case on

its face.”

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AYALA V. WONG 53

Even if the trial judge had not been willing to completely

reject the prosecution’s implausible explanation that it struck

Robert M. because he mentioned the Sagon Penn case, there

is a strong likelihood that, had defense counsel been present

and been able to persuade the court that the prosecution’s

principal reason for challenging this juror — his reluctance to

impose the death penalty — was pretextual, the court would

have concluded that the strike violated Batson. We thus

cannot conclude that the exclusion of defense counsel from

the Batson proceedings did not prevent Ayala from showing

that the prosecution’s strike of Robert M. was based on its

impermissible consideration of race.

* * *

Although each of the reasons offered by the prosecution

for challenging the black and Hispanic jurors discussed above

could have been shown to be pretextual had defense counsel

been allowed to participate at steps two and three of the

Batson proceedings, it is not necessary that all of the reasons

advanced by the prosecution be pretextual or be shown to be

pretextual. Notwithstanding the existence of some apparently

appropriate reasons, “if a review of the record undermines . . . 

many of the proffered reasons, the reasons may be deemed a

pretext for racial discrimination.” Kesser v. Cambra,

465 F.3d 351, 360 (9th Cir. 2006) (en banc) (quoting Lewis

v. Lewis, 321 F.3d 824, 830 (9th Cir. 2003)) (emphasis

added). In short, “[a] court need not find all nonracial

reasons pretextual in order to find racial discrimination” with

respect to any particular juror, and the exclusion of any one

juror in violation of Batson requires reversal of the verdict. 

Id.

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C.

Because the defense was excluded from the Batson

proceedings, it could not bring necessary facts and arguments

to the attention of the trial judge, the institutional actor best

positioned to evaluate the prosecution’s credibility and to

determine if its proffered reasons for striking the minority

jurors were its actual and legitimate reasons. Furthermore,

because the defense was excluded from the Batson

proceedings, the appellate courts reviewing this case cannot

engage in a proper comparative juror analysis, or know what

other facts and arguments might be employed to demonstrate

that the proffered reasons were false, facially discriminatory,

and pretextual. The latter form of prejudice was exacerbated

when the vast majority of the juror questionnaires were lost.

Even on this deficient record, Ayala’s Batson claim is

compelling: the prosecution struck all seven of the black and

Hispanic jurors in a position to serve on the jury, and many

of its proffered race-neutral reasons are highly implausible. 

Given the strength of Ayala’s prima facie case, the evidence

that the prosecution’s proffered reasons were false or

discriminatory, and the inferences that can be drawn from the

available comparative juror analysis, it is “impossible to

conclude that [Ayala’s] substantial rights were not affected”

by the exclusion of defense counsel from the Batson

proceedings. Kotteakos, 328 U.S. at 765. Ayala has suffered

prejudice under Brecht, and is entitled to relief. When that

demonstration of prejudice is supplemented bythe state’s loss

of the juror questionnaires, the case for prejudice under

Brecht is even more clear.

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AYALA V. WONG 55

V.

Although our conclusions in Parts III and IV — that the

state court committed federal constitutional error that

prejudiced Ayala under the Brecht standard — would dictate

that he be granted habeas relief, we may not grant such relief

if, as the state asserts, and the district court agreed, Ayala’s

claim (specifically his exclusion from stages two and three of

the Batson proceedings) is barred by Teague v. Lane,

489 U.S. 288 (1989). “[I]n addition to performing any

analysis required by AEDPA, a federal court considering a

habeas petition must conduct a threshold Teague analysis

when the issue is properly raised by the state.” Horn v.

Banks, 536 U.S. 266, 272 (2002).

Under Teague, a “new constitutional rule[] of criminal

procedure” cannot be applied retroactively to cases on

collateral review. 489 U.S. at 310 (plurality opinion). Thus,

“[b]efore a state prisoner may upset his state conviction or

sentence on federal collateral review, he must demonstrate as

a threshold matter that the court-made rule of which he seeks

the benefit is not ‘new,’” but had been established at the time

his conviction became final. O’Dell v. Netherland, 521 U.S.

151, 156 (1997). “A holding constitutes a ‘new rule’ within

the meaning of Teague if it ‘breaks new ground,’ ‘imposes a

new obligation on the States or the Federal Government,’ or

was not ‘dictated by precedent existing at the time the

defendant’s conviction became final.’” Graham v. Collins,

506 U.S. 461, 467 (1993) (quoting Teague, 489 U.S. at

301).20

20 Teague is subject to two exceptions. See Saffle v. Parks, 494 U.S.

484, 494–95 (1990) (a “new rule” can be applied retroactively on

collateral review if “the rule places a class of private conduct beyond the

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We hold that Ayala’s claim does not require the

retroactive application of a new constitutional rule of criminal

procedure, and thus is not Teague-barred. At the time

Ayala’s conviction became final on May 14, 2001, it was

established that defense counsel must be permitted to be

present and offer argument during Batson steps two and three

when, as in Ayala’s case, the proceedings do not require the

prosecution to reveal confidential information or trial

strategy.

A.

In this Circuit, this rule was unequivocally “dictated by

precedent,” Teague, 489 U.S. at 301 (emphasis omitted), long

before Ayala’s conviction became final, having been

established in United States v. Thompson, 827 F.2d 1254 (9th

Cir. 1987). In Thompson, we held that a district court had

made a constitutional error when, after the defendant had

established a prima facie case under Batson, the court

permitted the prosecution to state the reasons for its

peremptory strikes ex parte. Observing that Batson step two

might sometimes require the prosecutor to “reveal

confidential matters of tactics and strategy,” we recognized

that in some circumstances there might be “compelling”

reasons to conduct the proceedings ex parte. Id. at 1258–59. 

We therefore declined to adopt an absolute rule holding that

the defense must always be permitted to participate at Batson

steps two and three. We held, however, that defense counsel

must be permitted to be present and offer argument during

power of the State to proscribe,” or if it constitutes a “‘watershed rule[] of

criminal procedure’ implicating the fundamental fairness and accuracy of

the criminal proceeding”) (quotingTeague, 489 U.S. at 311). Neither party

contends that either exception is applicable in this case.

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AYALA V. WONG 57

Batson steps two and three if the prosecution’s proffered

race-neutral reasons do not involve confidential or strategic

information. Id. at 1258–59.21

Our decision in Thompson represented the straightforward

application of two lines of Supreme Court precedent. The

first line of precedent finds its source in the Sixth

Amendment’s guarantee of the right to counsel. Because “the

plain wording of” the Amendment “encompasses counsel’s

assistance whenever necessary to assure a meaningful

‘defence,’” the Court has long held that the right applies at all

“critical” stages of criminal proceedings. United States v.

Wade, 388 U.S. 218, 224–25 (1967); see also, e.g., White v.

Maryland, 373 U.S. 59, 60 (1963); Gideon v. Wainwright,

372 U.S. 335, 345 (1963). Ultimately, the right to counsel

“has been accorded . . . ‘not for its own sake, but because of

the effect it has on the ability of the accused to receive a fair

trial.’” Mickens, 535 U.S. at 166 (quoting Cronic, 466 U.S.

at 658). Foremost among the attributes of a fair trial is the

requirement that it be adversarial in nature: “[t]he very

premise of our adversary system of criminal justice is that

partisan advocacy on both sides of a case will best promote

the ultimate objective that the guilty be convicted and the

innocent go free.” Herring v. New York, 422 U.S. 853, 862

(1975). “The right to the effective assistance of counsel is

thus the right of the accused to require the prosecution’s case

21 The dissent suggests that, because Thompson recognized the need for

“occasional departures” from the rule regarding the exclusion of defense

counsel from Batson steps two and three, Thompson, 827 F.2d at 1258, its

conclusion was “not [] a clear rule of constitutional law.” Dissent at 79. 

We are puzzled by this, as many constitutional rules recognize exceptions

— e.g., the exigency exception to the Fourth Amendment prohibition on

warrantless searches, and the public safety exception to Miranda — but

that does not make the rules any less clear.

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to survive the crucible of meaningful adversarial testing.”

Cronic, 466 U.S. at 656. As we observed in Thompson,

“[t]he right of a criminal defendant to an adversary

proceeding is fundamental to our system of justice,” and thus

ex parte proceedings are justifiable only as “uneasy

compromises with some overriding necessity.” 827 F.2d at

1258.

Batson is the seminal case in the second line of precedent. 

After setting out the three-stage framework used to determine

whether the prosecution has engaged in purposeful racial

discrimination in the selection of a jury, the Batson Court

declined “to formulate particular procedures to be followed

upon a defendant’s timely objection to a prosecutor’s

challenges.” 476 U.S. at 99. Batson made clear, however,

that the defendant bears the ultimate burden of persuasion. 

Id. at 98. Batson also made clear that a court must consider

“all relevant circumstances” in deciding whether a defendant

has met his burden of persuasion — an inquiry that requires

determiningwhether a prosecutor’s stated reasons for striking

a particular juror are race-neutral, and, if race-neutral,

whether they are his actual reasons. Id. at 96–99; see

Miller-El v. Dretke, 545 U.S. 231, 240 (2005).

In Thompson, we recognized that the Batson framework

leaves defense counsel with “two crucial functions” that it

must be permitted to perform. 827 F.2d at 1260. The first

function is “to point out to the district judge where the

government’s stated reason may indicate bad faith.” Id. As

we explained:

For example, government counsel here

excluded one of the jurors because he lived in

defendant’s neighborhood and wore jeans to

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AYALA V. WONG 59

court. This seems like a legitimate reason,

unless a nonexcluded juror also wore jeans or

other casual dress, or lived in the same

neighborhood as the defendant. . . . [D]efense

counsel might have been able to point out that

the stated reasons were pretextual because

others similarly situated were allowed to

serve. In addition, defense counsel might

have been able to argue that the reasons

advanced by the prosecution were legally

improper. . . . Of course, the district judge

might be able to detect some of these

deficiencies by himself, but that is not his

normal role under our system of justice.

Id. The second function is to “preserve for the record, and

possible appeal, crucial facts bearing on the judge’s

decision.” Id. at 1261. As we reasoned in Thompson:

All we have before us concerning this issue is

the prosecutor’s explanation of her reasons

and the district judge’s ruling. . . . [I]f we are

to review the district judge’s decision, we

cannot affirm simply because we are

confident he must have known what he was

doing. We can only serve our function when

the record is clear as to the relevant facts, or

when defense counsel fails to point out any

such facts after learning of the prosecutor’s

reasons. . . . Here, the record’s silence cannot

be reassuring.

Id. Thus, we held, only with the presence and assistance of

defense counsel can the trial judge and subsequent appellate

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judges properly evaluate whether the defense has met its

burden of persuasion under Batson. Excluding the defense

from the Batson proceedings without some compelling

justification therefore violates the Constitution. Id. at

1259–61.22

Thompson compels us to conclude that the rule Ayala

seeks is not, under Teague, a “new” one. “[C]ircuit court

holdings suffice to create a ‘clearly established’ rule of law

under Teague.” Belmontes v. Woodford, 350 F.3d 861, 884

(9th Cir. 2003) (reversed on other grounds by Brown v.

Belmontes, 544 U.S. 945 (2005)); see Williams v. Taylor,

529 U.S. 362, 412 (2000) (O’Connor, J., for the Court)

(“With one caveat, whatever would qualify as an old rule

under our Teague jurisprudence will constitute ‘clearly

established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court

of the United States’ under § 2254(d)(1). . . . The one caveat,

22 The state and the dissent, in arguing that Ayala’s claim is barred by

Teague, cite Lewis v. Lewis, 321 F.3d 824 (9th Cir. 2003), a case in which

we granted a habeas petitioner’s Batson claim. In the course of some

extended musings regarding the “ideal procedures under Batson,” id. at

830, the Lewis panel observed, in a footnote, that the argument that “a

court must allow defense counsel to argue” at Batson step three was not

“clearly established law,” as it “appears not to have been addressed by

courts.” Id. at 831 n.27. This passage is dicta, as the question of whether

defense counsel must be permitted to argue at Batson step three was not

“presented for review” in Lewis. Barapind v. Enomoto, 400 F.3d 744,

750–51 (9th Cir. 2005) (en banc) (per curiam). Indeed, this passage could

not represent anything but dicta, as the Lewis panel could not overrule our

prior decision in Thompson, of which it was apparently unaware. See

Miller v. Gammie, 335 F.3d 889, 899–900 (9th Cir. 2003) (en banc)

(holding that a prior panel’s decision may only be overruled by a

subsequent panel if the decision is “clearly irreconcilable” with a higher

court’s intervening ruling). Thompson’s holding thus unquestionably

remains binding Circuit law.

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AYALA V. WONG 61

as the statutory language makes clear, is that § 2254(d)(1)

restricts the source of clearly established law to this Court’s

jurisprudence.”). We have held that, as long as a rule derived

from Supreme Court precedent was established in this Circuit

when a petitioner’s conviction became final, it is not a “new

rule” under Teague. See Belmontes, 350 F.3d at 884; Bell v.

Hill, 190 F.3d 1089, 1092–93 (9th Cir. 1999). “This is true

even [if] other federal courts and state courts have rejected

our holding.” Bell, 190 F.3d at 1093. Because Thompson

itself relied on the Supreme Court’s right to counsel and equal

protection jurisprudence, “we cannot now say that a state

court would not have felt compelled by the Constitution and

Supreme Court precedent” to conclude that the rule Ayala

contends must be applied was not established at the time his

conviction became final. Id.

B.

We would hold that Ayala’s claim is not Teague-barred

even if we were free to conclude that, contrary to Bell and

Belmontes, Thompson did not in and of itself establish that

the rule Ayala seeks is not “new.” Nearly every court to

consider the question by the time Ayala’s conviction became

final had adopted the rule that we set forth in Thompson,

concluding that defense counsel must be allowed to

participate at Batson steps two and three except when

confidential or strategic reasons justify the challenge. The

Fourth, Eighth and Eleventh Circuits had all so held. See

United States v. Garrison, 849 F.2d 103, 106 (4th Cir. 1988)

(“We . . . agree with the Ninth Circuit that the important

rights guaranteed by Batson deserve the full protection of the

adversarial process except where compelling reasons

requiring secrecy are shown.”); United States v. Roan Eagle,

867 F.2d 436, 441 (8th Cir. 1989) (“[O]nce the prosecutor has

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advanced his racially neutral explanation, the defendant

should have the opportunity to rebut with his own

interpretation.”); United States v. Gordon, 817 F.2d 1538,

1541 (11th Cir. 1987) (remanding for an evidentiary hearing

where the district court had denied the defendant’s request for

a hearing to rebut the government’s proffered race-neutral

reasons). The state courts that confronted the issue had all

reached similar conclusions. See Ayala, 6 P.3d at 203; Goode

v. Shoukfeh, 943 S.W.2d 441, 452 (Tex. 1997); People v.

Hameed, 88 N.Y.2d 232, 238 (1996); State v. Hood, 245 Kan.

367, 378 (1989); Gray v. State, 317 Md. 250, 257–58 (1989);

Commonwealth v. Jackson, 386 Pa. Super. 29, 51 (1989);

Commonwealth v. Futch, 38 Mass. App. Ct. 174, 178 (1995);

see also Caspari v. Bohlen, 510 U.S. 383, 395 (1994) (“[I]n

the Teague analysis the reasonable views of state courts are

entitled to consideration along with those of federal courts.”).

These courts adopted the Thompson rule with good

reason. The Sixth Amendment provides that the defendant

must be permitted to have the assistance of a trained advocate

at all critical stages of the proceedings in order to test and

challenge all aspects of the prosecution’s case. See Cronic,

466 U.S. at 656. Batson did not suggest that there should be

an exception to this overarching rule when a defendant has

established a prima facie case that the prosecutor has struck

jurors on the basis of race. To the contrary, it makes no sense

to put the burden of persuasion on the defense, as Batson

does, and then refuse defense counsel the opportunity to hear

and respond to the prosecution’s explanations. The rule

Ayala seeks is not in any sense new, but rather one which, as

almost all courts to have considered the question have

concluded, follows directly from the more general rule that

the defendant has the right “to require the prosecution’s case

to survive the crucible of meaningful adversarial testing.” Id.;

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see also Wright v. West, 505 U.S. 277, 308–09 (1992)

(Kennedy, J., concurring in the judgment) (“Where the

beginning point is a rule of . . . general application, a rule

designed for the specific purpose of evaluating a myriad of

factual contexts, it will be the infrequent case that yields a

result so novel that it forges a new rule, one not dictated by

precedent.”).

The state and the dissent call our attention to two

decisions that reached a contrary conclusion, both of which

were decided soon after the Court issued Batson. In United

States v. Davis, the Sixth Circuit rejected a defendant’s

argument that his right to be present had been violated when

the trial court allowed the prosecution to explain its

peremptory strikes in camera, holding that “the district court

was entitled to hear from the Government under whatever

circumstances the district court felt appropriate.” 809 F.2d

1194, 1202 (6th Cir. 1987). Similarly, in United States v.

Tucker, the Seventh Circuit held that the Sixth Circuit was

correct to conclude that “Batson neither requires rebuttal of

the government’s reasons by the defense, nor does it forbid a

district court to hold an adversarial hearing.” 836 F.2d 334,

340 (7th Cir. 1988).23

23 The state and the dissent also cite a third decision that they contend

demonstrates that there is a Circuit split that precludes our finding that the

rule Ayala seeks was “dictated by precedent.” In Majid v. Portuondo,

where the issue was whether the defense had the right to cross-examine

witnesses at a Batson hearing, the Second Circuit remarked gratuitously

that “[i]t remains at least arguable that courts holdingBatson hearings may

. . . hear the [prosecution’s] explanations in camera and outside the

presence of the defendants.” 428 F.3d 112, 128 (2d. Cir. 2005). The

question of whether a challenge to the type of in camera hearing

conducted in Ayala’s case is Teague-barred was not, however, before the

court. Moreover, this passage in Majid can be understood as observing

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These decisions do not render Ayala’s claim Teaguebarred. “[T]he standard for determining when a case

establishes a new rule is ‘objective,’ and the mere existence

of conflicting authority does not necessarily mean a rule is

new.” Williams, 529 U.S. at 410 (quoting Wright, 505 U.S.

at 304 (1992) (O’Connor, J., concurring in the judgment)). 

To the extent that these decisions deny that there is any right

to participate in Batson proceedings, they simply cannot be

reconciled with the basic Sixth Amendment requirement that,

at all critical stages of criminal proceedings, the defendant

must have the assistance of counsel in order to subject the

prosecution’s case to adversarial testing. That the courts in

Davis and Tucker failed to fully appreciate the relevance of

this principle is understandable, as in neither case did the

defendants invoke the right to counsel to support their claim:

in Davis, the defendants asserted that the in camera hearings

had violated their right to be present at trial, a right derived

principally from the Sixth Amendment’s Confrontation

Clause, see Davis, 809 F.2d at 1200; in Tucker, the defendant

claimed that the ex parte proceedings violated his rights to

due process and to an impartial jury, see Tucker, 836 F.2d at

338, 340. Perhaps for this reason, the Davis court failed to

recognize the important functions counsel serves during

Batson steps two and three, instead concluding that once the

defense had established a prima facie case of racial

discrimination, its “participation was no longer necessary for

the district court to make its determination.” 809 F.2d at

1202. As we explained in Thompson, this statement is simply

not true: defense counsel continues to serve the two crucial

functions of bringing facts and arguments to the attention of

the trial court and preserving them for the record. Thompson,

only that there is no absolute right to an adversarial proceeding, which is

consistent with the rule that Ayala seeks here.

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827 F.2d at 1260–61. Likewise, the court in Tucker rejected

the rule we adopted in Thompson because it concluded that

Batson itself did not require the defense to be present during

Batson steps two and three, and because our exception

permitting ex parte proceedings in some circumstances

threatened to “swallow the rule.” See Tucker, 836 F.2d at

338, 340. Our rule is not, however, derived directly from

Batson, but rather from the confluence of Batson and the

Court’s Sixth Amendment jurisprudence. Moreover, the fact

that a rule is subject to an exception — perhaps even a

relatively broad exception — is not a justification for

rejecting the rule altogether when the result, in those cases in

which the exception does not apply, is to deprive a defendant

of his constitutional rights.24

Even assuming some doubt may have existed as to

whether the rule Ayala seeks was “dictated by precedent” in

the immediate aftermath of the Sixth and Seventh Circuits’

decisions in 1987 and 1988, by the time Ayala’s conviction

became final in 2001, 13 years later, every court to have

considered the issue in the interim — state and federal — had

rejected, either explicitly or implicitly, the Sixth and Seventh

Circuits’ view, and had adopted the Thompson rule. See

Garrison, 849 F.2d at 106; Roan Eagle, 867 F.2d at 441;

Ayala, 6 P.3d at 203; Goode, 943 S.W.2d at 452; Hameed,

24 Tucker itself may be read to recognize this point, as it did not

explicitly reject our conclusion that an adversarial hearing at Batson steps

two and three was sometimes constitutionally compelled. Id. at 340. It

observed that, in general, “adversarial hearings are the most appropriate

method for handling most Batson-type challenges.” Id. Thus, although

the Tucker court purported to reject Thompson in favor of Davis, the

decision did not necessarily foreclose defendants from claiming that their

rights had been violated by the trial court’s employment of a

nonadverserial Batson proceeding.

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66 AYALA V. WONG

88 N.Y.2d at 238; Hood, 245 Kan. at 378; Gray, 317 Md. at

257–58; Jackson, 386 Pa. Super. at 51; Futch, 38 Mass. App.

Ct. at 178. The Supreme Court had also, in the interim,

acknowledged a version of our rule when it observed (in

dicta) that, when a prosecutor challenges a defendant’s use of

peremptory challenges, “[i]n the rare case in which the

explanation for a challenge would entail confidential

communications or reveal trial strategy, an in camera

discussion can be arranged.” Georgia v. McCollum, 505 U.S.

42, 58 (1992). Thus, the California Supreme Court

characterized the rule Ayala sought — the Thompson rule —

as one that had been “almost universally recognized.” Ayala,

6 P.3d at 203. Given that the California Supreme Court’s

description is correct, the rule that Ayala would have us apply

is not Teague-barred.25

25 We also note that where, as here, the state court applied the rule in

question on direct appeal, and determined it to be “almost universally

recognized,” the application ofTeague to bar the petitioner’s claims would

do little to further the doctrine’s purpose. Teague is motivated by

considerations of comity and finality. See Teague, 489 U.S. at 308. Its

purpose is to afford repose to the states by ensuring that criminal

convictions that were valid at the time they became final will not be upset

by subsequently discovered constitutional rules. As Justice O’Connor

explained, applying new rules on collateral review

continually forces the States to marshal resources in

order to keep in prison defendants whose trials and

appeals conformed to then existing constitutional

standards. Furthermore, as we recognized in Engle v.

Isaac, “[s]tate courts are understandably frustrated

when they faithfully apply existing constitutional law

only to have a federal court discover, during a [habeas]

proceeding, new constitutional commands.” [456 U.S.

107, 128 n.33 (1982).]

Id. at 310. Although Teague may still bar the application in federal habeas

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Accordingly, we conclude that, at the time Ayala’s

conviction became final, it was established for purposes of

Teague that defense counsel cannot be excluded from Batson

steps two and three absent some “compelling justification”

for doing so. Thompson, 827 F.2d at 1259–60. The

California Supreme Court held that this rule was violated in

Ayala’s case. It found, and the state does not dispute, that

“no matters of trial strategy were revealed” in the hearings at

which the prosecution explained its reasons for its peremptory

challenges of all the potential black and Hispanic jurors. 

Ayala, 6 P.3d at 203.26 Thus, the exclusion of defense

proceedings of rules that the state courts have themselves recognized, cf.

Beard v. Banks, 542 U.S. 406, 413 (2004), Horn, 536 U.S. at 272, the

interests of comity and finality are obviously far less weighty when a state

court has accepted a rule than when it has rejected or ignored a rule. Here,

the state is not being forced to marshal resources to defend against a new

and novel claim that was not recognized at the time the conviction became

final; nor did it faithfully apply existing constitutional law only to have a

federal court subsequently apply new constitutional commands. To the

contrary, the state is challenging a rule that the California Supreme Court

found to be well established and controlling at the time it affirmed Ayala’s

conviction on direct appeal, as well as at the time the trial court conducted

its proceedings. Certainly the state court could not be “frustrated” to find

that a federal court determined that it was error to exclude the defense

from the Batson proceedings when the state court itself had held that this

very same rule was “almost universally recognized” and reached the same

determination itself.

26 The dissent attempts to reframe the Teague analysis as follows: 

Thompson merely articulated the rule that defense counsel could not be

excluded without “compelling” justification; it was not until after Ayala’s

conviction became final that courts recognized that the prosecutor’s

explanation in this case (i.e., not revealing his strategy to the defense) was

“not a valid reason not to follow the norm of an adversarial proceeding.”

Dissent at 80.

To the contrary, Thompson directly addressed the government’s

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counsel was in violation of the Constitution, and the only

remaining question as to that aspect of the case is whether the

constitutional error was prejudicial.

VI.

Our dissenting colleague makes three assertions that are

fundamental to her disagreement with our opinion. All are

plainly erroneous and illustrate her misunderstanding of the

nature of our holding. First, the dissent suggests that, because

the trial court accepted the prosecutor’s rationale for striking

these jurors, deference to its ruling is required under AEDPA,

citing Rice v. Collins, 546 U.S. 333, 338–39 (2006). Dissent

at 109–11. Second, and along similar lines, the dissent

accuses us of failing to give the state court decision the

“benefit of the doubt,” citing Felkner v. Jackson, ___ U.S.

___, 131 S. Ct. 1305, 1307 (2011). Dissent at 119. Third, the

dissent assumes that Ayala must demonstrate that the

individual jurors were struck for racial reasons by “clear and

convincing evidence,” citing 28 U.S.C. § 2254(e)(1). Dissent

at 106, 110.

argument that “an adversary hearing is inappropriate because the

government lawyer is required to reveal confidential matters oftactics and

strategy.” Thompson, 827 F.2d at 1259. In that case, we rejected this

claim as a general proposition and held that the determination of whether

revealing case strategy could be a compelling justification in a particular

case must be determined by examining whether the facts in that case

warranted an exception to the general rule. Id. Rules applied on a case-bycase basis do not raise Teague issues. See Wright v. West, 505 U.S. 277,

308 (1992) (Kennedy, J., concurring) (“If the rule in question is one which

of necessity requires a case-by-case examination of the evidence, then we

can tolerate a number of specific applications without saying that those

applications themselves create a new rule.”).

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Each of these assertions assumes, incorrectly, that we are

confronting an ordinary Batson challenge on habeas review

— a challenge to the holding in a case in which defense

counsel was able to present arguments to the trial court

regarding racial bias, appeal that claim to the state appellate

court, and subsequently seek reversal in federal court of the

judgment that none of the jurors was struck by the

prosecution for impermissible racially motivated reasons. 

Rice and Felkner are precisely such cases. The Supreme

Court has emphasized, in such cases, that deference is

required, that the petitioner must demonstrate his factual

claims of prosecutorial bias by clear and convincing

evidence, and that we may not give the petitioner the benefitof-the-doubt with regard to the existence of racial prejudice. 

However, this case is not an ordinary Batson challenge, and

for the reasons we have explained supra the dissent’s

approach is both inapplicable and wholly inappropriate. This,

as the dissent consistently ignores, is a case in which the

challenge is to the procedure employed by the trial court in

conducting the Batson inquiry — a procedure that resulted in

the denial of a fair Batson hearing to the defendant. Thus, it

is not our task here to show that Ayala should have prevailed

on his Batson claim, but only that he was prejudiced in his

ability to prevail on that claim by the fact that his counsel was

not present at the Batson hearing.

We cannot defer to the trial court where procedural error

(such as the state supreme court found here and that the state

concedes) has rendered the trial court’s determination

unreliable. Ayala’s counsel was excluded from Batson stages

two and three, thus depriving him of the opportunity to

persuade the trial judge that the prosecutor was motivated by

racial bias. Even a very capable trial judge may overlook or

fail to understand the arguments supporting racial motivation

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“if unassisted by an advocate.” Thompson, 827 F.2d at 1261. 

Because the procedures designed to ensure a fair hearing to

the defendant were not followed, we cannot afford deference

to the trial court’s determination of the merits of the Batson

claim. As we concluded in Thompson, we “cannot rely on . . .

such fundamentally flawed procedures to show that that

defendant suffered no prejudice.” Id. at 1261.

Next, for similar reasons, the “clear and convincing

evidence” standard has no role with regard to Ayala’s

challenge. The dissent’s position is inherently at odds with

the statutory authority on which it relies. That AEDPA

provision reads as follows:

In a proceeding instituted by an application

for a writ of habeas corpus by a person in

custody pursuant to the judgment of a State

court, a determination of a factual issue made

by a State court shall be presumed to be

correct. The applicant shall have the burden of

rebutting the presumption of correctness by

clear and convincing evidence.

28 U.S.C. § 2254(e)(1). We have previously held, in

interpreting § 2254(e)(1), that “the presumption of

correctness and the clear-and-convincing standard of proof

only come into play once the state court’s fact-findings

survive any intrinsic challenge.” Taylor v. Maddox, 366 F.3d

992, 1000 (9th Cir. 2004) (emphasis added) (cited by but

expressly not overruled in Wood v. Allen, 588 U.S. 290,

299–301 & n.1 (2010)). In Taylor, we explained that a state

court factual finding is intrinsically flawed if “the process

employed by the state court is defective,” Id. at 999 (citing

Nunes v. Mueller, 350 F.3d 1045, 1055–56 (9th Cir. 2003)). 

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AYALA V. WONG 71

Here, the state court admitted that precluding Ayala’s counsel

from establishing a Batson violation at stages two and three

of the state’s trial court proceeding constituted procedural

error. Under Taylor, because the state court proceeding was

flawed, it is not entitled to a presumption of correctness, and

Ayala is not required to demonstrate his Batson claim by

clear and convincing evidence. The dissent’s assertion is

contrary to AEDPA and to Taylor and would simply erect an

insurmountable barrier that would protect the conceded error

against any effective federal review.27

VII.

We hold that the exclusion of Ayala and his counsel

during Batson steps two and three constitutes prejudicial

error. In the language of Brecht: we cannot say that had

counsel been permitted to participate in the Batson

proceedings, Ayala would have been unable to show that the

prosecution violated Batson. To the contrary, constitutional

error on the part of the state likely prevented Ayala from

showing that the prosecution utilized its peremptory

challenges in a racially discriminatory manner, and thus

permitted him to be tried, convicted, and sentenced to death

by a jury selected in a manner repugnant to the Constitution. 

Accordingly, we reverse the judgment of the district court,

and remand with instructions to grant the writ and order that

Ayala be released from custody unless the state elects to retry

27 There is one additional error our dissenting colleague makes that is not

limited to the Batson context but would rewrite the law of prejudice in all

habeas cases. For that reason, it deserves mention here. As we have

explained supra, the well-establishedBrechtstandard governing prejudice

has not been revised or modified, and the dissent’s suggestion to the

contrary is without merit. See discussion supra at 30–34 & nn.12–13.

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72 AYALA V. WONG

him within a reasonable amount of time to be determined by

the district court.

REVERSED and REMANDED.

CALLAHAN, Circuit Judge, dissenting:

In 1985, Hector Juan Ayala shot and killed three men. In

1989, he was convicted of three counts of murder, and the

jury returned a death sentence. On direct appeal his

conviction and sentence were affirmed by the California

Supreme Court in 2000. People v. Ayala, 6 P.3d 193 (Cal.

2000). The Supreme Court of the United States denied his

petition for certiorari in 2001. Ayala v. California, 532 U.S.

908 (2001). Ayala filed his initial petition for a writ of

habeas corpus in the United States District Court for the

Southern District of California in 2002. This appeal is from

the district court’s February 17, 2009, final order denying the

petition.1

The majority holds, based primarily on law developed

after Ayala’s trial, that Ayala must be released or retried

because it suspects the prosecutor might have had a racial

motive in recusing seven jurors. It does so by inappropriately

deconstructing the California Supreme Court’s opinion to

justify its evasion of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death

Penalty Act of 1996 (“AEDPA”) so that it may review the

state trial court’s 1989 decisions de novo. Because Ayala’s

federal claim is Teague-barred, and because the majority’s

1 There does not appear to be any question that there was sufficient

evidence to convict Ayala of murder. See Ayala, 6 P.3d at 199–201.

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AYALA V. WONG 73

approach and conclusion are contrary to AEDPA and recent

Supreme Court opinions, I dissent.

I

I agree with the district court and the State that Ayala’s

claim that he was deprived of his constitutional rights when

his attorney was not present when the prosecutor offered his

reasons for the challenged recusals, is barred under Teague v.

Lane, 489 U.S. 288 (1989).2

A. The standard for determining whether a claim is

barred under Teague.

In Caspari v. Bohlen, 510 U.S. 383 (1994), the Supreme

Court set forth the test for determining whether a state

prisoner’s claim was Teague-barred:

“[A] case announces a new rule if the result

was not dictated by precedent existing at the

time the defendant’s conviction became

final.” Teague v. Lane, supra, 489 U.S. at

301. In determining whether a state prisoner

is entitled to habeas relief, a federal court

should apply Teague by proceeding in three

steps. First, the court must ascertain the date

on which the defendant’s conviction and

sentence became final for Teague purposes. 

Second, the court must “[s]urve[y] the legal

2 Because it is clear that Ayala’s claims would be Teague-barred if

reviewed de novo, the majority should have begun and ended with this

Teague analysis, rather than reach the more difficult questions regarding

the standard of review under 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d).

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74 AYALA V. WONG

landscape as it then existed,” Graham v.

Collins, supra, 506 U.S., at 468, and

“determine whether a state court considering

[the defendant’s] claim at the time his

conviction became final would have felt

compelled by existing precedent to conclude

that the rule [he] seeks was required by the

Constitution,” Saffle v. Parks, 494 U.S. 484,

488 (1990). Finally, even if the court

determines that the defendant seeks the

benefit of a new rule, the court must decide

whether that rule falls within one of the two

narrow exceptions to the nonretroactivity

principle. See Gilmore v. Taylor, 508 U.S.

333, 345 (1993).

Id. at 390 (emphasis as quoted in Caspari).3

There is no dispute that Ayala’s conviction became final

in May 2001, when the Supreme Court denied certiorari, and

Ayala does not assert that he comes within either of the two

narrow exceptions. The remaining question is whether, in

May 2001, the unconstitutionality of ex parte procedure used

by the trial court in 1986 was “dictated” by precedent.

B. The evolution of Batson as of May 2001.

In Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79, 96 (1986), the

Supreme Court held that “a defendant may establish a prima

facie case of purposeful discrimination in selection of the

petit jury solely on evidence concerning the prosecutor’s

exercise of peremptory challenges at the defendant’s trial.” 

 

3

 In all quotations, the parallel citations have been omitted.

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AYALA V. WONG 75

See also Georgia v. McCollum, 505 U.S. 42, 47 (1992). 

Batson established a three-step inquiry. First, the defendant

must make a prima facie showing that the prosecution has

exercised peremptory challenges in a racially discriminatory

manner. Batson, 476 U.S. at 96. The Supreme Court stated

that it had “confidence that trial judges, experienced in

supervising voir dire, will be able to decide if the

circumstances concerning the prosecutor’s use of peremptory

challenges creates a prima facie case of discrimination

against black jurors.” Id. at 97. Second, “[o]nce the

defendant makes a prima facie showing, the burden shifts to

the State to come forward with a neutral explanation for

challenging black jurors.” Id. Third, the trial court must then

“determine if the defendant has established purposeful

discrimination.” Id. at 98.

In setting forth this three-step standard, the Supreme

Court specifically declined “to formulate particular

procedures to be followed upon a defendant’s timely

objection to a prosecutor’s challenges.” Id. at 99. The Court

reiterated that “[i]n light of the variety of jury selection

practices followed in our state and federal trial courts, we

make no attempt to instruct these courts how best to

implement our holding today.” Id. at 99 n.24. As a result,

during the quarter of a century that has passed since Batson,

courts have considered numerous ways of applying Batson’s

three-step standard.

Ayala’s primary argument is that the trial court’s

exclusion of him and his counsel from the proceedings in

which the prosecution justified its recusal of seven jurors

violated his constitutional rights to assistance of counsel at

critical stages of the proceedings, to be personally present,

and to assist his counsel in his defense. In response, the State

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76 AYALA V. WONG

argued and the district court held that in 2001, when Ayala’s

conviction became final, the exclusion of Ayala and his

counsel from the proceedings was not a constitutional

violation, and hence, Ayala’s claim was barred by Teague,

489 U.S. 288.

The California Supreme Court, in reviewing Ayala’s

direct appeal, concluded that it was “almost universally

recognized that ex parte proceedings following a motion

regarding peremptory challenges allegedly made on the basis

of improper group bias are poor procedure and should not be

conducted unless compelling reasons justify them.” Ayala,

6 P.3d at 203.

The majority claims that in May 2001 this rule had been

“unequivocally ‘dictated by precedent’” as a result of our

opinion in United States v. Thompson, 827 F.2d 1254 (9th

Cir. 1987). Majority at p. 56. Thompson concerned a 1985

criminal trial in a federal district court. The judge alone

conducted voir dire and “the government used four of its

peremptory challenges to exclude all four blacks in the

venire.” Id. at 1256. When Thompson’s lawyer moved for

a mistrial, the district court “allowed the government to put

its reasons for the disputed peremptory challenges on the

record, albeit in camera and out of the presence of the

defendant and his lawyer.” Id. Thompson appealed, arguing

that this procedure violated his Fifth Amendment right to due

process and his Sixth Amendment right to a fair and impartial

jury. Id. A divided panel concluded that the “district court

erred in refusing to allow defense counsel in this case to hear

the government’s reasons for excluding the black potential

jurors and to present argument thereon.” Id. at 1261. We

explained that “situations where the court acts with the

benefit of only one side’s presentation are uneasy

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AYALA V. WONG 77

compromises with some overriding necessity, such as the

need to act quickly or to keep sensitive information from the

opposing party. Absent such compelling justification, ex

parte proceedings are anathema in our system of justice and,

in the context of a criminal trial, may amount to a denial of

due process.”4 Id. at 1258–59.

C. Ayala’s Sixth Amendment claim was not dictated

by precedent in 2001.

In Horn v. Banks, 536 U.S. 266, 272 (2002), the Supreme

Court held that “a federal court considering a habeas petition

must conduct a threshold Teague analysis when the issue is

properly raised by the state,” even if the state supreme court

did not consider the issue. Thus, we are required to

determine as a threshold matter whether Ayala’s claim is

Teague-barred. I would hold that Ayala’s claim is Teaguebarred because it was not “dictated” by Supreme Court case

law, and the case Ayala relies upon, Thompson, did not

announce a clear constitutional rule. The majority confuses

the wisdom of Thompson with whether that wisdom had been

embraced by 2001.

Thompson is not a Supreme Court opinion and concerned

a federal court trial, not a state court trial. Accordingly, it

could not dictate the result in Ayala’s case when his

conviction became final. In Massachusetts Delivery Ass’n v.

Coakley, 671 F.3d 33, 47 (1st Cir. 2012), the First Circuit

reiterated that “[s]tate courts are not bound by the dictates of

4 The dissent argued that the majority’s choice of an adversarial

proceeding over an in camera proceeding was contrary to the Supreme

Court’s decision in Batson not to formulate particular procedures. Id. at

1262 (Sneed, J., dissenting).

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the lower federal courts, although they are free to rely on the

opinions of such courts when adjudicating federal claims.” 

(internal citations omitted.). Similarly, in Bromley v. Crisp,

561 F.2d 1351, 1354 (10th Cir. 1977), the Tenth Circuit noted

that “the Oklahoma Courts may express their differing views

on the retroactivity problem or similar federal questions until

we are all guided by a binding decision of the Supreme

Court.” Also, in U.S. ex rel. Lawrence v. Woods, 432 F.2d

1072, 1076 (7th Cir. 1970), the Seventh Circuit agreed that

“because lower federal courts exercise no appellate

jurisdiction over state tribunals, decisions of lower federal

courts are not conclusive on state courts.” Consistent with

our sister circuits’ decisions, our prior opinion in Thompson,

which was an appeal from a federal criminal action, was not

binding on the California Supreme Court.

Furthermore, even though the logic behind the opinion in

Thompson may be compelling, the opinion does not set forth

a clear rule of constitutional law. The opinion recognized

that there were “occasional departures from” the norm of

holding adversarial proceedings, noted a number of instances

in which in camera proceedings were appropriate, and

concluded that departure from the norm “may amount to a

denial of due process.” Id. at 1258–59 (emphasis added). 

The language in Thompson is vague compared, for example,

to our statement in Menefield v. Borg, 881 F.2d 696, 699 (9th

Cir. 1989), that “we hold that the right to counsel attaches to

the motion for a new trial stage.”

The fact that Thompson did not lay down a clear rule of

constitutional law is confirmed by a review of other Ninth

Circuit cases as well as decisions by our sister circuits. In

Lewis v. Lewis, 321 F.3d 824, 831 n.27 (9th Cir. 2003), we

observed that “[c]ertainly, requiring a court to allow defense

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AYALA V. WONG 79

counsel to argue [during the three-step Batson process] is not

clearly established law.” Thus, fifteen years after Thompson

issued, we did not think that Thompson established a clear

rule of constitutional law. In Majid v. Portuondo, 428 F.3d

112 (2d Cir. 2005), the Second Circuit commented that “[i]t

remains at least arguable that courts holding Batson hearings

may, to the contrary, hear the explanations in camera and

outside the presence of the defendants.” Id. at 128 (citations

omitted). In United States v. Tucker, 836 F.2d 334, 340 (7th

Cir. 1988), the Seventh Circuit noted that the Supreme Court

in Batson expressly declined to formulate procedures and

disagreed with the Ninth Circuit’s opinion in Thompson

insofar as it required “adversarial hearings once a defendant

establishes a prima facie case of purposeful discrimination.” 

Similarly, in United States v. Davis, 809 F.2d 1194, 1202 (6th

Cir. 1987), the Sixth Circuit commented that Batson does not

“require the participation of defense counsel while the

Government’s explanations are being proffered.”

The majority strives mightily to distinguish these cases on

the grounds that they are not well-reasoned, in some instances

are dicta, and have been rejected by other circuits and most

state courts. But the standard established by the Supreme

Court for determining whether an issue is Teague-barred is

not the merits of the old rule, or even recognition of the

wisdom of the new rule, but whether the new rule was

“dictated by precedent.” Caspari, 510 U.S. at 390. These

conflicting cases confirm that Thompson did not dictate the

result in Ayala’s case.

Moreover, as noted, the rule that the majority claims was

established in Thompson is not a bright-line rule. Rather, at

most, Thompson states that defense counsel could not be

excluded absent some “compelling justification.” See

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Majority at p. 67. Here, the prosecutor offered an explanation

for seeking to present his reasons in camera: he did not want

to reveal his strategy to the defense. Following Thompson

and the other cases cited by the majority, it is now clear that

this is not a valid reason not to follow the norm of an

adversarial proceeding.

5 However, this was not firmly

established in 2001 when Ayala’s conviction became final.

In sum, I agree with the district court that the right to be

present and have counsel present when the prosecution

presented its reasons for its challenged recusals was not

“dictated by precedent” when Ayala’s conviction became

final, and therefore the issue is Teague-barred.

II

Assuming the issue is not Teague-barred, we must next

turn to the question of what exactly the California Supreme

Court held and what deference it is owed. The court first

acknowledged that “no particular procedures are

constitutionally required” to conduct a Batson hearing,

thereby rejecting Ayala’s federal claim. Ayala, 6 P.3d at 202. 

“The next question,” it said, was “whether it was error to

exclude defendant from participating in the hearings on his

Wheeler motions.” It concluded that “as a matter of state

5 The California Supreme Court carefully considered the prosecutor’s

claim that his reasons for the recusals would disclose matters of strategy. 

It concluded that the prosecutor had “simply [given] the reasons for his

challenges, reasons that defendant was entitled to hear and that disclosed

no secrets of trial strategy.” Ayala, 6 P.3d at 202–03. Accordingly, it

concluded that “[i]t was unreasonable to exclude defendant from the

hearings.” Id. at 203. The California Supreme Court was right. However,

for purposes of the application of Teague, the point is that this conclusion

was neither dictated nor compelled when Ayala’s conviction became final.

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law, it was.” Id. at 203 (emphasis added). After conducting

a thorough review of relevant state and federal precedents, it

reiterated that it had “concluded that error had occurred under

state law” and “noted” Thompson’s suggestion that the error

may amount to a denial of due process. Id. at 204. 

Nonetheless, it concluded that the error was “harmless under

state law, and that, if federal error occurred, it, too, was

harmless beyond a reasonable doubt as a matter of federal

law.” Id. (internal citations omitted). Thus, although there

may be some question as to whether the California Supreme

Court actually found that there was federal error, it clearly

addressed Ayala’s federal claim in determining that whatever

federal error occurred, it was harmless as a matter of federal

law.

The majority and I part ways as to how to review this

holding. Because the state court adjudicated Ayala’s federal

claim on the merits and rejected it, we must accord that

decision deference under AEDPA. See Johnson v. Williams,

133 S. Ct. 1088, 1094 (2013) (“[W]hen a federal claim has

been presented to a state court and the state court has denied

relief, it may be presumed that the state court adjudicated the

claim on the merits in the absence of any indication or

state-law procedural principles to the contrary.”) (internal

citations omitted).

However, the majority’s dislike for AEDPA drives it to

try to avoid its provisions. In its initial opinion, the majority

interpreted the Supreme Court’s opinion in Brecht v.

Abrahamson, 507 U.S. 619 (1993), in such a manner as to

allow it to grant relief without deferring to the California

Supreme Court. See Ayala v. Wong, 693 F.3d 945, 961–63

(9th Cir. 2012). The majority now takes a different tack in an

effort to circumnavigate AEDPA and review Ayala’s 1989

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82 AYALA V. WONG

state court conviction de novo. Contrary to the Supreme

Court’s recent opinions, the majority deconstructs the

California Supreme Court’s opinion. In doing so, the

majority: (1) separates the California Supreme Court’s

finding of error under state law from its adjudication of the

federal claim; (2) decides that the California Supreme Court

did not determine whether there was error under federal law;

and then (3) concludes that it has “no reason to give

§ 2254(d) deference” to the California Supreme Court’s

decision. Majority at p. 25.

The majority’s approach is fundamentally flawed for at

least two reasons. First, it is contrary to the Supreme Court’s

opinions directing that any question as to whether a state

court considered a constitutional issue is to be resolved in

favor of finding that it did. Richter v. Harrington, 131 S. Ct.

770, 784–85 (2011); Johnson v. Williams, 133 S. Ct. 1088,

1094–96 (2013). Second, by separating the California

Supreme Court’s determination of Batson/Wheeler6error

from its adjudication of the federal claim, the majority evades

giving the opinion the deference demanded by AEDPA and

the United States Supreme Court.

6 As the majority notes, People v. Wheeler, 22 Cal.3d 258 (1978), is the

California analogue to Batson. See Majority at p. 6 n.1. Accordingly, in

cases arising out of California, claims that minority jurists were

improperly excluded are sometimes referred to as Batson/Wheeler claims.

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A. Supreme Court precedent compels the conclusion

that the California Supreme Court decided

Ayala’s federal claims on their merits.

1. The California Supreme Court’s opinion.

The California Supreme Court’s evaluation of the

Batson/Wheeler issue was clear and concise. It held that “it

was error to exclude defendant from participating in the

hearings on the Wheeler motions.” Ayala, 6 P.3d at 203. 

Indeed, the California Supreme Court recognized that the

error enhanced “the risk that defendant’s inability to rebut the

prosecution’s stated reasons will leave the record

incomplete.” Id. at 204. As the majority admits, the

California Supreme Court cited both Batson and our opinion

in Thompson in concluding that “it seems to be almost

universally recognized that ex parte proceedings following a

motion regarding peremptory challenges allegedly made on

the basis of improper group bias are poor procedure and

should not be conducted unless compelling reasons justify

them.” Ayala, 6 P.3d at 203.

The California Supreme Court then turned to the question

of prejudice and held:

We have concluded that error occurred

under state law, and we have noted

Thompson’s suggestion that excluding the

defense from a Wheeler-type hearing may

amount to a denial of due process. We

nonetheless conclude that the error was

harmless under state law (People v. Watson

(1956) 46 Cal.2d 818, 836, 299 P.2d 243), and

that, if federal error occurred, it, too, was

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harmless beyond a reasonable doubt

(Chapman v. California (1967) 386 U.S. 18,

24) as a matter of federal law.

6 P.3d at 204. There can be no doubt that the California

Supreme Court adjudicated the federal claim, first by

implicitly rejecting it, and then, as an alternative holding,

finding that any error was harmless.

2. The majority’s deconstruction of the California

Supreme Court’s opinion.

The majority acknowledges this portion of the California

Supreme Court’s opinion. Majority at p. 14. However, it

then proceeds to mull over whether the state court (a) held

there was error under federal constitutional law, (b) held there

was no error under federal constitutional law, or (3) did not

decide whether there was error under federal constitutional

law. Id. These are idle musings, for the “only question that

matters under § 2254(d)(1)” is whether the petitioner’s claim

was adjudicated on the merits, and whether that adjudication

was contrary to or an unreasonable application of clearly

established Supreme Court precedent. Lockyer v. Andrade,

538 U.S. 63, 71 (2003). Whether one agrees with the

California Supreme Court’s decision or not, the federal claim

was clearly adjudicated.

The majority, although purporting to accept that the

California Supreme Court found constitutional error,

proceeds to argue that “alternatively” the exception to

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deference set forth in Richter applies.7 Majority at pp. 19–20. 

Exactly how the majority reaches this conclusion is not clear. 

Here is its explanation:

Richter and Williams instruct us to afford a

rebuttable presumption that a fairly presented

claim was “adjudicated on the merits” for

purposes of § 2254(d), but this presumption is

rebuttable if there is “any indication or

state-law procedural principles” supporting

the conclusion that the state court did not

adjudicate the federal claim on the merits. 

Richter, 131 S. Ct. at 784–85. Here, the

California Supreme Court denied Ayala relief

overall but did so by (1) finding that the trial

court committed error on state law grounds,

(2) failing to make any express determination

of error on federal constitutional grounds, and

(3) finding any error harmless under both the

state and federal standards for harmless error. 

7 This “alternate” approach, in addition to being incorrect, serves to

obscure the majority’s separation of the California Supreme Court’s

determination that there was federal constitutional error from that court’s

determination that any error “was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt as

a matter of federal law.” Ayala, 6 P.3d at 204 (internal citation omitted,

emphasis added). Without its alternate approach, the majority would be

hard pressed not to give the California Supreme Court’s determination of

harmless error the deference it is entitled to under AEDPA. This,

obviously, is our primary area of disagreement. I would, applying

AEDPA, defer to the California Supreme Court’s opinion. The majority,

instead, concocts an approach that circumvents AEDPA in order that it

may review Ayala’s 1989 conviction de novo. See Majority at p. 37 (“If

we cannot say that the exclusion of defense counsel with or without the

loss of the questionnaires likely did not prevent Ayala from prevailing on

his Batson claim, then we must grant the writ.”).

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In the context of these holdings, the rebuttable

presumption that Richter and Williams

instruct us to afford is, in fact, rebutted. The

California Supreme Court, by finding any

alleged error harmless under both the state

and federal standards for harmless error, had

no reason to reach the question of whether

federal constitutional error occurred.

Majority at p. 20.

The majority then argues that the California Supreme

Court “would have had good reason not to decide the merits

of the federal constitutional issue” because courts generally

do not pass on questions of constitutionality unless

adjudication is unavoidable. Majority at p. 20. Also, by

analogy it draws on cases involving claims of ineffective

assistance of counsel under Strickland v. Washington,

466 U.S. 668 (1984), where the Supreme Court has

interpreted a state court’s silence as a failure to reach an issue

and thus not an adjudication on the merits. Majority at pp.

21–22.

The majority then proffers its vision of the law: “There

are circumstances in which, even if a state court has denied

relief overall, a state court’s silence with respect to a fairly

presented federal issue cannot be interpreted as an

‘adjudication on the merits’ of that issue for purposes of

§ 2254(d), because the rebuttable presumption cited in

Richter and Williams is rebutted by the legal principles

involved (including the principle of constitutional avoidance)

and factual context applicable to a particular case.” Majority

at p. 23. This novel approach allows the majority to assert

that the “California Supreme Court had no reason to reach

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AYALA V. WONG 87

Ayala’s federal constitutional claim,” and to conclude that it

has “no reason to give § 2254 deference” to the California

Supreme Court’s decision. Majority at pp. 23–25.

3. The majority’s approach is contrary to recent

Supreme Court opinions.

The majority’s deconstruction of the California Supreme

Court’s opinion, besides being unnecessary dicta and

unpersuasive, is contrary to recent Supreme Court opinions

that were directed at the Ninth Circuit. In both Richter,

131 S. Ct. 770, and Johnson, 133 S. Ct. 1088, the Supreme

Court reversed us for failing to give proper deference to the

state courts’ opinions.8 Moreover, the Supreme Court set

forth a clear standard that leaves no doubt that here the

California Supreme Court considered Ayala’s federal claims

on their merits.

In Richter, the Court stressed that AEDPA “bars

relitigation of any claim ‘adjudicated on the merits in state

court,’ subject only to the exceptions in §§ 2254(d)(1) and

(d)(2).” 131 S. Ct. at 784 (internal quotation marks omitted). 

The Court noted that there does not need to be “an opinion

from the state court explaining the state court’s reasoning,”

and the state court need not say it was adjudicating the federal

claim on its merits. Id. It further held that, “[w]hen a federal

claim has been presented to a state court and the state court

has denied relief, it may be presumed that the state court

adjudicated the claim on the merits in the absence of any

indication orstate-law procedural principles to the contrary.” 

Id. at 784–85.

8

See Richter v. Hickman, 578 F.3d 944 (9th Cir. 2009); Williams v.

Cavazos, 646 F.3d 626 (9th Cir. 2011).

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Two years later, in Williams, a unanimous Supreme Court

found it necessary to remind us of this standard. Williams

challenged his conviction for first degree murder on the

ground that the trial court improperly dismissed a juror. 

133 S. Ct. at 1093. The California state courts denied him

relief and the district court denied Williams’ habeas petition. 

Judge Reinhardt, writing for a three-judge panel of the Ninth

Circuit, held that despite the Richter presumption, the state

courts had not adjudicated Williams’ federal claim,9

 applied

a de novo standard of review, and granted relief. Williams,

646 F.3d at 641, 653.

The Supreme Court firmly rejected our opinion. It first

noted that the assumption that a federal claim was overlooked

by the state court is wrong for a number of reasons, including:

(1) “there are circumstances in which a line of state precedent

is viewed as fully incorporating a related federal

 

9

 The panel had reasoned:

It is obvious, not “theoretical” or “speculat[ive],” that

Williams’s constitutional claim was not adjudicated at

all, and so the Richter presumption is overcome. Id. at

785. Specifically, the portion of the court’s opinion

concerning the discharge ofJuror No. 6 reveals that the

court upheld his dismissal on the sole basis that the trial

court had not abused its discretion in applying section

1089. That the court engaged in an extended discussion

of Williams’s statutory claim, but made no mention

whatsoever of her more fundamental constitutional

claim, is a compelling “indication” that the court either

overlooked or disregarded her Sixth Amendment claim

entirely, rather than that it adjudicated the claim but

offered no explanation at all for its decision.

Williams v. Cavazos, 646 F.3d 626, 639 (9th Cir. 2011). The majority

appears to follow a similar course in the case at bar.

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AYALA V. WONG 89

constitutional right,”

10 Williams, 133 S. Ct. at 1094; (2) “a

state court may not regard a fleeting reference to a provision

of the Federal Constitution or federal precedent as sufficient

to raise a separate federal claim,” id. at 1095; and (3) “there

are instances in which a state court may simply regard a claim

as too insubstantial to merit discussion.” Id. The Supreme

Court concluded that, “[w]hen a state court rejects a federal

claim without expressly addressing that claim, a federal

habeas court must presume that the federal claim was

adjudicated on the merits.” Id. at 1096.

If federal courts are to presume that a state court

considers a federal claim even when the court does not

expressly address the claim, it follows that where, as here, the

California Supreme Court’s opinion clearly reflects that the

court was aware of the federal claims, we must accept that the

federal claims were “adjudicated on the merits,” and limit any

relief according to § 2254(d). See Richter, 131 S. Ct. at 784.

The majority, however, seizes on the Supreme Court’s

statement that the presumption “can in some limited

circumstances be rebutted,” Williams, 133 S. Ct. at 1096, and

adopts a definition of the exception that swallows the

presumption. The majority asserts that the presumption does

not apply because “it was not necessary for the state court to

reject the claim of federal constitutional error on the merits in

order for it to deny relief to the petitioner,” and because “the

facts of this case dictate the conclusion that the California

Supreme Court believed that the error under state law also

10 The Supreme Court specifically noted that “[i]n California, for

example, the state constitutional right to be present at trial is generally

coextensive with the protections of the Federal Constitution.” 133 S. Ct.

at 1094–95 (internal quotation marks omitted).

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constituted federal constitutional error.” Majority at pp.

16–17. The first reason is contrary to Williams because the

Supreme Court held that the presumption applies even where

the state court regards a federal claim “as too insubstantial to

merit discussion.” 133 S. Ct. at 1095. The second proffered

reason is also contrary to Williams because the Court held

that the presumption applies where “state precedent is viewed

as fully incorporating a related federal constitutional right.” 

Id. at 1094.

Furthermore, in order to rebut the Richter presumption

there must be “reason to think some other explanation for the

state court’s decision is more likely.” Richter, 131 S. Ct. at

785. But here, there can be no doubt that the California

Supreme Court did consider Ayala’s federal claims, first by

stating that “no particular procedures are constitutionally

required” to hold a Batson hearing, and then, in the

alternative, holding that any federal error was harmless. 

Ayala, 6 P.3d at 202–04. Thus, the California Supreme

Court’s opinion is not best read as addressing Ayala’s federal

claims, as the majority admits,11 but can only be so read.

In sum, a review of the California Supreme Court’s

opinion allows for only one conclusion: that the court

considered Ayala’s federal claims. Moreover, even if this

conclusion was not mandated, and the presumption set forth

by the Supreme Court in Richter and Williams came into

play, the presumption would be controlling. Because the

11 The majority states: “if we were compelled to determine whether the

California Supreme Court adjudicated Ayala’s federal claim on its merits

in favor of the petitioner or the state, we would hold without the slightest

hesitation that it found that error occurred under federal constitutional

law.” Majority at p. 19.

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AYALA V. WONG 91

California Supreme Court considered Ayala’s federal claims

(and, in any event, must be presumed to have done so), the

AEDPA standard of review applies.

B. The majority applies a de novo standard of review

and fails to give proper deference to the California

Supreme Court’s opinion.

The majority’s treatment of the California Supreme

Court’s ruling on the Batson/Wheeler violation is a smoke

screen designed to obscure the fact that the majority reviews

prejudice de novo rather than under the AEDPA deference

standard. This approach cannot be squared with the Supreme

Court’s recent opinions, which require that we ask whether

the California Supreme Court’s determination that the error

was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt was “so lacking in

justification that there was an error well understood and

comprehended in existing law beyond any possibility of fair

minded disagreement.” Richter, 131 S. Ct. at 786–87.

1. Deference is mandated by the statute and Supreme

Court precedent.

The applicable provisions of AEDPA are codified in

28 U.S.C. § 2254.12 The Supreme Court’s opinions hold that

 

12 Section 2254(d) reads in relevant part:

(d) An application for a writ of habeas corpus on behalf

of a person in custody pursuant to the judgment of a

State court shall not be granted with respect to any

claim that was adjudicated on the merits in State court

proceedings unless the adjudication of the claim--

(1) resulted in a decision that was contrary to, or

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the AEDPA standard applies to the California Supreme

Court’s finding of harmless error. In Richter, the Supreme

Court reiterated that federal habeas relief is not available

“unless it is shown that the earlier state court’s decision ‘was

contrary to’ federal law then clearly established in the

holdings of this Court,” or “‘was based on an unreasonable

determination of the facts’ in light of the record before the

state court.” 131 S. Ct. at 785 (internal citations omitted). 

Thus, it does not matter whether the California Supreme

Court’s determination of harmless error is a question of fact,

or law, or mixed; it is entitled to deference under AEDPA.

The Supreme Court further elaborated on the applicable

standard. In Richter, it held that a “state court’s

determination that a claim lacks merit precludes federal

habeas relief so long as ‘fairminded jurists could disagree’ on

the correctness of the state court’s decision.” 131 S. Ct. at

786 (citing Yarborough v. Alvarado, 541 U.S. 652, 664

(2004)). In addressing prejudice in a claim of ineffective

involved an unreasonable application of, clearly

established Federal law, as determined by the

Supreme Court of the United States; or

(2) resulted in a decision that was based on an

unreasonable determination of the facts in light of

the evidence presented in the State court

proceeding.

(e)(1) In a proceeding instituted by an application for a

writ of habeas corpus by a person in custody pursuant

to the judgment of a State court, a determination of a

factual issue made by a State court shall be presumed to

be correct. The applicant shall have the burden of

rebutting the presumption of correctness by clear and

convincing evidence.

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AYALA V. WONG 93

assistance of counsel under Strickland, the Supreme Court

held:

[A] challenger must demonstrate “a

reasonable probability that, but for counsel’s

unprofessional errors, the result of the

proceeding would have been different. A

reasonable probability is a probability

sufficient to undermine confidence in the

outcome.” [Strickland v. Washington,

466 U.S. 668] at 694 [(1984)]. It is not

enough “to show that the errors had some

conceivable effect on the outcome of the

proceeding.” Id. at 693. Counsel’s errors

must be “so serious as to deprive the

defendant of a fair trial, a trial whose result is

reliable.” Id. at 687.

131 S. Ct. at 787–88. The Supreme Court again emphasized

this deference when it reversed us in Felkner v. Jackson,

131 S. Ct. 1305 (2011).13

13 Although the majority here engages in considerably more analysis

than we did in Felkner, the Supreme Court’s admonition remains

instructive. The Court held:

The Batson issue before us turns largely on an

“evaluation of credibility.” 476 U.S., at 98, n.21. The

trial court’s determination is entitled to “great

deference,” ibid., and “must be sustained unless it is

clearly erroneous,” Snyder v. Louisiana, 552 U.S. 472,

477 (2008).

That is the standard on direct review. On federal

habeas review, AEDPA “imposes a highly deferential

standard for evaluating state-court rulings” and

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2. The majority’s alternate standard of review is

contrary to Supreme Court precedent.

The majority, however, invokes Brecht v. Abrahamson,

507 U.S. 619 (1993), in order to justify what is, in essence, a

de novo standard of review. Majority at pp. 33–37. The

majority asserts that relief may be granted if we find that the

error had a “substantial and injurious effect or influence in

determining the jury’s verdict,” Majority at p. 33 (quoting

Brecht, 507 U.S. at 623), or “if one cannot say, with fair

assurance, after pondering all that happened without stripping

the erroneous action for the whole, that the judgment was not

substantially swayed by the error,” Majority at p. 34 (quoting

Merolillo v. Yates, 663 F.3d 444, 454 (9th Cir. 2011)), or

even where a “judge feels himself in virtual equipoise as to

the harmlessness of the error.” Majority at p. 35 (quoting

Merolillo, 663 F.3d at 454). That the majority essentially

conceives of this as de novo review is obvious from its

declaration that “[i]f we cannot say that the exclusion of

defense counsel with or without the loss of the questionnaires

likely did not prevent Ayala from prevailing on his Batson

claim, then we must grant the writ.” Majority at p. 37.

“demands that state-court decisions be given the benefit

of the doubt.” Renico v. Lett, 130 S. Ct. 1855, 1862,

(2010) (internal quotation marks omitted). Here the

trial court credited the prosecutor’s race-neutral

explanations, and the California Court of Appeal

carefully reviewed the record at some length in

upholding the trial court’s findings. The state appellate

court’s decision was plainly not unreasonable. There

was simply no basis for the Ninth Circuit to reach the

opposite conclusion, particularly in such a dismissive

manner.

131 S. Ct. at 1307.

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Brecht was decided before the passage of AEDPA. In Fry

v. Pliler, 551 U.S. 112, 121 (2007), the Supreme Court held

that “in § 2254 proceedings a court must assess the

prejudicial impact of constitutional error in a state-court

criminal trial under the ‘substantial and injurious effect’

standard set forth in Brecht.” However, in doing so, the

Supreme Court construed the Brecht standard as including the

AEDPA standard:

Three years after we decided Brecht,

Congress passed, and the President signed, the

[AEDPA], under which a habeas petition may

not be granted unless the state court’s

adjudication “resulted in a decision that was

contrary to, or involved an unreasonable

application of, clearlyestablished Federal law,

as determined by the Supreme Court of the

United States . . . .” 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1). 

In Mitchell v. Esparza, 540 U.S. 12 (2003)

(per curiam), we held that, when a state court

determines that a constitutional violation is

harmless, a federal court may not award

habeas relief under § 2254 unless the

harmlessness determination itself was

unreasonable. Petitioner contends that

§ 2254(d)(1), as interpreted in Esparza,

eliminates the requirement that a petitioner

also satisfy Brecht’s standard. We think not. 

That conclusion is not suggested by Esparza,

which had no reason to decide the point. Nor

is it suggested by the text of AEDPA, which

sets forth a precondition to the grant of habeas

relief (“a writ of habeas corpus . . . shall not

be granted” unless the conditions of § 2254(d)

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are met), not an entitlement to it. Given our

frequent recognition that AEDPA limited

rather than expanded the availabilityof habeas

relief, see, e.g., Williams v. Taylor, 529 U.S.

362, 412 (2000), it is implausible that, without

saying so, AEDPA replaced the Brecht

standard of “‘actual prejudice,’ ” 507 U.S., at

637 (quoting United States v. Lane, 474 U.S.

438, 449 (1986)), with the more liberal

AEDPA/Chapman standard which requires

only that the state court’s harmless-beyonda-reasonable-doubt determination be

unreasonable. That said, it certainly makes no

sense to require formal application of both

tests (AEDPA/Chapman and Brecht) when

the latter obviously subsumes the former.

551 U.S. at 119–20.

Three aspects of the Supreme Court’s explanation are

particularly important. First, the Court endorsed its prior

opinion in Esparza, 540 U.S. 12, that habeas relief was

available only if the state court’s determination of

harmlessness was unreasonable. Fry, 551 U.S. at 119. 

Second, the Court reiterated that AEDPA “limited rather than

expanded the availability of habeas relief.” Id. Third, the

Court held that the Brecht “actual prejudice” standard

requires a greater showing than the “the more liberal

AEDPA/Chapman standard which requires only that the state

court’s harmless-beyond-a-reasonable-doubt determination be

unreasonable.” Id. at 119–20. See also Brecht, 507 U.S. at

637 (holding that habeas petitioners “are not entitled to

habeas relief based on trial error unless they can establish that

it resulted in ‘actual prejudice’”); Pulido v. Chrones, 629 F.3d

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1007, 1020 (9th Cir. 2010) (holding that because the

petitioner “did not suffer any actual prejudice, he is not

entitled to habeas relief”).

The majority attempts to evade the deference inherent in

the AEDPA/Brecht standard by quoting language from

Merolillo, 663 F.3d at 454. The majority asserts that when a

judge is “in virtual equipoise as to the harmlessness of the

error” and has “grave doubt about whether an error affected

a jury [substantially and injuriously], the judge must treat the

error as if it did so.” Majority at p. 35 (citations omitted).

The majority takes this standard out of context. Merolillo

does not suggest that the state court’s opinion is not entitled

to deference. Our opinion first recognized that we continue

to look to the last reasoned decision of the state court, and

that the state court’s findings “are entitled to a presumption

of correctness unless the petitioner rebuts the presumption

with clear and convincing evidence.” 663 F.3d at 453 (citing

28 U.S.C. § 2254(e)(1)). Although the opinion refers to the

Supreme Court’s prior elucidations on harmless error, we

concluded that Brecht’s “substantial and injurious effect”

standard governs our harmless error review. Merolillo,

663 F.3d at 455. Our opinion also determined that applying

the AEDPA/Chapman standard, the state court’s

determination of harmless error was objectively

unreasonable. Id.

3. Deference to the state court opinion reconcilesBrecht

and the Supreme Court’s recent opinions.

The majority fails to appreciate that even when focusing

on harmlessness, a state court’s factual findings are entitled

to deference, see, e.g., Mansfield v. Sec’y, Dep’t of Corr.,

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679 F.3d 1301, 1309 (11th Cir. 2012), and that this deference

informs the definition of “grave doubt.” In order to grant

relief, a federal court must have “grave doubt” as to the

harmlessness of the error. Critically, the Supreme Court’s

opinions mandate that this “grave doubt” be objective rather

than subjective. Our personal perspectives as to harmlessness

are not controlling. Rather, we are directed to consider

whether “there is no possibility fairminded jurists could

disagree” with the state court’s decision, and whether there

“was an error well understood and comprehended in existing

law beyond any possibility for fairminded disagreement.” 

Richter, 131 S. Ct. at 786–87. Thus, by definition, where

fairminded jurists can disagree, there is no “grave doubt” as

to the harmlessness of the error. In other words, in state

habeas petitions subject to AEDPA, any objective “grave

doubt” as to the harmlessness of an error is dispelled by a

determination that “fairminded jurists” could disagree.

The reach of this mandate from Richter can be illustrated

by considering the majority’s statement in a footnote. The

majority opines that the California Supreme Court’s

conclusion that Ayala was not prejudiced was “an

unreasonable application of Chapman.

14

 Chapman, decided

 

14 The majority states:

In holding that Ayala has demonstrated his entitlement

to relief under Brecht, we therefore also hold to be an

unreasonable application of Chapman the California

Supreme Court’s conclusion that Ayala was not

prejudiced by the exclusion of the defense during

Batson steps two and three or by the loss of the

questionnaires.

Majority at p. 34 n.13.

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some 30 years before the passage of AEDPA, held “that

before a federal constitutional error can be held harmless, the

court must be able to declare a belief that it was harmless

beyond a reasonable doubt.” Id. at 24. AEDPA does not

change the constitutional standard, but it does alter the

standard applied by federal courts when reviewing a state

prisoner’s habeas petition. AEDPA limits relief to instances

where the state court adjudication was “an unreasonable

application of, clearly established Federal law,” or “an

unreasonable determination of the facts in light of the

evidence.” 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d). The Supreme Court’s

opinions in cases such as Richter and Williams provide an

objective measure for what is unreasonable under AEDPA: a

state court’s determination of a federal claim is unreasonable

only if no fairminded jurist could agree with it.

In this case, consistent with the Supreme Court’s

opinions, a writ may not issue just because “we cannot say

that the exclusion of defense counsel and the loss of

questionnaires likely did not prevent Ayala from prevailing

on his Batson claim.” Majority at p. 37. Rather, a writ may

issue only if we determine (using the majority’s language)

that there is a “grave doubt as to the harmlessness of the

error,” meaning that no fairminded jurist could find that the

exclusion of defense counsel and the loss of questionnaires

did not prevent Ayala from prevailing on his Batson claim.15

15 This approach is also consistent with the Supreme Court’s opinion in

Cullen v. Pinholster, 131 S. Ct. 1388 (2011). There the Court held that

“[i]f a claim has been adjudicated on the merits by a state court, a federal

habeas petitionmust overcome the limitation of § 2254(d)(1) on the record

that was before that state court.” Id. at 1400. The federal court must look

at the record that was before the state court and determine whether

fairminded jurists could disagree with the state court’s decision. 

Furthermore, the Court in reviewing the habeas petition in Pinholster

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See, e.g., Richter, 131 S. Ct. at 786–87. As set forth in the

next section, fairminded jurists can concur in the California

Supreme Court’s determination of harmless error.

III

A review of the record shows that although the loss of the

questionnaires and the exclusion of defense counsel constitute

error, fairminded jurists can agree with the California

Supreme Court that those facts did not prevent Ayala from

prevailing on his Batson claim.

A. The loss of certain prospective jurors’

questionnaires.

The majority states that it is “unable to evaluate the

legitimacy of some of the prosecution’s proffered reasons for

striking the black and Hispanic jurors because they referred

to questionnaires that are now lost.” Majority at p. 39. Of

course, this statement misses the mark because the real

question is whether the record was sufficient to allow the

California Supreme Court to review Ayala’s claims as he

presented them to that court. A review of the California

Supreme Court’s opinion and Ayala’s filings shows that the

state court fully and fairly considered his claims. 

Furthermore, Ayala has not shown that the loss of certain

applied a deferential standard of review. It held that “Pinholster has not

shown that the California Supreme Court’s decision that he could not

demonstrate deficient performance by his trial counsel necessarily

involved an unreasonable application of federal law,” and that “Pinholster

also has failed to show that the California Supreme Court must have

unreasonably concluded that Pinholster was not prejudiced.” Id. at

1403–04, 1408.

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prospective jurors’ questionnaires violated his constitutional

rights or that the loss prejudiced him.

First, it is critical to note what was in the record before

the California Supreme Court. The record contained the voir

dire transcript for all prospective jurors, the transcript of the

in camera hearings on the prosecutor’s reasons for the

recusals, the questionnaires of all the seated jurors, and the

questionnaires of the alternate jurors. What was missing were

the 77-question, 17-page questionnaires the 200 or so other

potential jurors had filled out.

In Boyd v. Newland, 467 F.3d 1139 (9th Cir. 2006), we

recognized that the Supreme Court’s opinion in Miller-El v.

Dretke, 545 U.S. 231 (2005), holds that “comparative juror

analysis is an important tool that courts should utilize in

assessing Batson claims.”16 Boyd, 467 F.3d at 1145. We

commented that “comparative juror analysis” referred “to an

examination of a prosecutor’s questions to prospective jurors

and the jurors’ responses, to see whether the prosecutor

treated otherwise similar jurors differently because of their

membership in a particular group.” Id. Boyd concluded:

A reviewing court cannot examine the

“totality of the relevant facts” and “all

relevant circumstances,” Batson, 476 U.S. at

94, surrounding a prosecutor’s peremptory

strike of a minority potential juror without an

16 We further held that the right to a comparative juror analysis explicitly

set forth in Miller-El was not Teague-barred as it “simply illustrates the

means by which a petitioner can establish, and should be allowed to

establish, a Batson error.” Boyd, 467 F.3d at 1146 (internal citation

omitted).

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entire voir dire transcript. A transcript of the

complete voir dire, as distinct from a partial

transcript up to the time of the Batson motion,

is proper because comparative juror analysis

is appropriate both at the time of the Batson

motion and in light of all subsequent voir dire

testimony.

467 F.3d at 1151. Here, we have the entire voir dire

transcript. Moreover, there is nothing in Boyd to suggest that

in addition to the voir dire transcript, juror questionnaires

from jurors who are not selected are essential to a

determination of the totality of the relevant facts.

Indeed, the opposite conclusion can be drawn from our

treatment in Boyd of a California rule requiring an indigent

defendant to show some cause in order to receive a free

transcript of voir dire. We held, citing United States v.

MacCollum, 426 U.S. 317, 322–23 (1976), that the California

rule did not violate the Constitution, but that the state court

erred in failing to recognize that the defendant had raised a

plausible Batson claim entitling him to a transcript of voir

dire. Boyd, 467 F.3d at 1151. If a defendant can be required

to show some cause in order to receive a transcript of voir

dire, it follows that a defendant has no per se right to the

preservation of all questionnaires filled out by prospective

jurors who were not seated.

To be fair, there is language in our en banc opinion in

Kesser v. Cambra, 465 F.3d 351 (9th Cir. 2006) (en banc),

that could be read to infer a right to juror questionnaires. We

concluded that: “In this case, an evaluation of the voir dire

transcript and juror questionnaires clearly and convincingly

refutes each of the prosecutor’s nonracial grounds,

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compelling the conclusion that his actual and only reason for

striking [a juror] was her race.” Id. at 360. But this statement

shows only that where juror questionnaires are available, we

will consider them, not that the questionnaires are necessary. 

Instead, we commented that a comparative juror analysis was

appropriate because “[w]e too have a transcript of voir dire

and a Batson claim fairly presented, and that is all Miller-El

requires.” Id. at 361.

In addition, we recently commented on the lack of

questionnaires of excused jurors in Briggs v. Grounds,

682 F.3d 1165 (9th Cir. 2012). Briggs concerned a Batson

challenge to a state court conviction where the federal record

did not contain the questionnaires of excused jurors. Id. at

1170. In affirming the district court’s denial of relief, the

majority noted:

The dissent seems to conclude that because

we cannot independently verify the answers

from the questionnaires as they are not in the

record, the defense’s characterization is

equally, if not more, plausible despite the state

court determinations to the contrary. 

However, “AEDPA imposes a highly

deferential standard for evaluating state-court

rulings and demands that state-court decisions

be given the benefit of the doubt,” Felkner v.

Jackson, [sic] 131 S. Ct. 1305, 1307 (2011)

(per curiam) (internal quotation marks

omitted) (overturning the Ninth Circuit). The

dissent’s readiness to doubt the state court

determination based on the defendant’s

characterization of the record does not apply

the appropriate level of deference Congress

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and the United States Supreme Court have

required of us.

Id. at 1170–71. The majority in Briggs further noted that “it

is widely acknowledged that the trial judge is in the best

position to evaluate the credibility of the prosecutor’s

proffered justifications.” Id. at 1171 (internal citations

omitted). Citing the Supreme Court’s statements in Rice v.

Collins, 546 U.S. 333, 338–39 (2006), that a “federal habeas

court can only grant Collins’ petition if it was unreasonable

to credit the prosecutor’s race-neutral explanations for the

Batson challenge,” we stated in Briggs that:

it would be anathema to AEDPA if we were

to assume that the petitioner’s contentions

about the questionnaires are true simply

because the record before us does not contain

the excused jurors’ questionnaires. The

burden to disprove the factual findings rests

with Briggs. 28 U.S.C. § 2254(e)(1)

(requiring “clear and convincing evidence” to

rebut “a determination of a factual issue made

by a State court”).

Id.

It follows that the lack of prospective jurors’

questionnaires does not relieve Ayala of his burden to show

by clear and convincing evidence that the California Supreme

Court was wrong in determining that the prosecutor was not

biased. Accordingly, we must determine whether Ayala has

shown that the lack of these questionnaires in his case renders

the record insufficient for a determination of his federal

claim. He fails in this task for several reasons.

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First, the California Supreme Court reasonably rejected

Ayala’s claim that his constitutional rights were infringed by

the loss of the bulk of prospective juror questionnaires. It

explained:

The deficiency of which he complains is the

absence of certain questionnaires, which were

completed by prospective jurors, then lodged

with the superior court, subsequently lost by

its clerk’s office, and finally determined by

the superior court to be beyond

reconstruction. A criminal defendant is

indeed entitled to a record on appeal that is

adequate to permit meaningful review. That

is true under California law. [Citation.] It is

true as well under the United States

Constitution — under the Fourteenth

Amendment generally, and under the Eighth

Amendment specifically when a sentence of

death is involved. [Citation.] The record on

appeal is inadequate, however, only if the

complained-of deficiency is prejudicial to the

defendant’s ability to prosecute his appeal.

([People v. Alvarez, 14 Cal.4th 155,] at p. 196,

fn.8 [1996]).

Ayala, 6 P.3d at 208. The California Supreme Court

concluded that if the loss of the questionnaires was error

under either federal or state law, “it was harmless beyond a

reasonable doubt.” Id. This determination is reasonable and

entitled to deference. Rice, 546 U.S. at 338–39.

Second, the determination is reasonable because the

missing juror questionnaires are not critical to Ayala’s federal

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claims. The questionnaires of the 70 or so jurors who were

never called are not relevant because Ayala does not allege,

let alone show, that the potential jurors were excused due to

constitutionally forbidden reasons.

Third, none of the prosecutor’s stated reasons for recusing

the questioned jurors relied solely, or even primarily, on the

jurors’ questionnaires. Rather, in each instance the

prosecutor mentioned the juror’s specific answers to

questions posed on voir dire. In a couple of instances the

prosecutor referenced a person’s questionnaire, but this was

primarily to explain why the prosecutor found the

individual’s oral responses troubling.

Finally, Ayala has ably presented his specific Batson

challenges based on the voir dire transcript and the extant

questionnaires of the seated jurors and alternates. Although

Ayala argues that the lost questionnaires might support his

arguments, such a contention can be made about any lost

document. If such speculation constituted prejudice, the

standard would be reduced to a per se rule.

B. Challenges to the Individual Jurors

The remaining issue is whether Ayala has shown by clear

and convincing evidence that no reasonable jurist could have

credited the prosecutor’s non-discriminatory reasons for

excusing the seven jurors in issue. In other words, whether

at least one fairminded jurist could agree with the California

Supreme Court’s opinion. The majority discusses only three

of the jurors in its opinion, but a review of the prosecutor’s

reasons for excusing each of the seven jurors shows that the

California Supreme Court’s determination that “the

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challenged jurors were excluded for proper, race-neutral

reasons” was reasonable. See Ayala, 6 P.3d at 204.

1. Olanders D.

Olanders D. was one of the first jurors challenged by

Ayala. The trial court held that Ayala had not met the first

prong of the Batson test (a prima facie showing that the

challenge was based on race, see Kesser, 465 F.3d at 359),

but nonetheless indicated that it would hear the prosecutor’s

reasons for the recusal in order to have a complete record. 

The prosecutor stated in the ex parte proceeding:

My primary concern with regard to [Olanders

D.] is his ability to vote for the death

[sentence] during the penalty phrase. On his

questionnaire he indicated that he does not

believe in the death penalty. He did indicate

that his view had changed over the last several

years. He told us that he did want to serve. 

During the time that he was questioned, I felt

that his responses were not totally responsive

to the questions of either counsel for the

defense or myself.

My observations in reading his questionnaire

and before even making note of his racial

orientation was that his responses on the

questionnaire were poor. They were not

thought out. He demonstrated a lack of ability

to express himself well. And his answers did

not make a lot of sense. As a result, I felt that

he is not a person who could actively

participate in a meaningful way in

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deliberations with other jurors, and his ability

to fit in with a cohesive group of 12 people I

sincerely question, and it was for that reason

plus his stand on the death penalty that led me

to believe that I did not want him on this jury.

The trial judge responded:

Okay. Certainly with reference to whether or

not he would get along with 12 people, it may

well be that he would get along very well with

12 people. I think the other observations of

counsel are accurate and borne out by the

record.

The California Supreme Court held that the record

showed that the challenged jurors were excluded for proper,

race-neutral causes. Ayala, 6 P.3d at 204. Addressing

Olanders D., the court commented:

[T]he prosecutor stated he had exercised the

challenge in part because his questionnaire

indicated he opposed the death penalty. The

prosecutor acknowledged Olanders D.’s oral

statements that his views had changed, but

commented that his answers were “not totally

responsive to the questions of either counsel

for the defense or myself.” He further stated,

in essence, that Olanders D.’s difficulties in

communicating led him to question whether

he would “fit in” on the jury. The court

disagreed with the latter point, noting, “it may

well be that he would get along very well with

12 people,” but added: “I think the other

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observations of counsel are accurate and

borne out by the record.”

Id. The California Supreme Court further noted that the trial

court “credited the prosecutor’s opinion[] that Olanders D.

opposed the death penalty.” Id. at 206.

The majority claims that the prosecutor’s motives for

excusing Olanders D. is suspect for several reasons. First,

Ayala “could have pointed to seated white jurors” who

similarly expressed hesitancy to impose the death penalty. 

Majority at p. 41. Second, the majority asserts that its review

of the voir dire transcript shows that “Olanders D.’s answers

were responsive and complete.” Majority at p. 42. Third, it

claims that the responses of a seated white juror were just as

unresponsive. Majority at p. 43. The majority concludes that

none of the reasons proffered by the prosecutor should be

sustained because one was rejected by the trial judge, “two

failed to distinguish the juror whatsoever from at least one

seated white juror,” and the fourth cannot be evaluated

because his questionnaire was lost. Majority at p. 44.

Were we reviewing the trial judge’s decision de novo, the

majority’s approach might be persuasive. But the applicable

standard is whether no fairminded judge could agree with the

California Supreme Court’s determination that the juror was

excluded for proper, race-neutral reasons. See Richter,

131 S. Ct. at 786. Ayala does not come close to meeting this

standard.

There is no suggestion that any seated juror raised a

similar set of concerns as Olanders D. The trial judge, who

had the opportunity to observe Olanders D., agreed with the

prosecutor that Olanders D. was ambivalent about the death

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penalty, had not been responsive on his questionnaire, and

lacked the ability to express himself clearly. Moreover, the

trial judge did not necessarily reject the prosecutor’s concern

that Olanders D. could not participate in a meaningful way in

jury deliberations, but rather only commented that it “may

well be that he would get along very well with 12 people [on

the jury].” The trial court’s determinations as affirmed by the

California Supreme Court are presumed correct. Rice,

546 U.S. at 338–39 (“State-court factual findings, moreover,

are presumed correct; the petitioner has the burden of

rebutting the presumption by‘clear and convincingevidence.’ 

§ 2254(e)(1).”).

The majority’s expressed concerns about Olanders D.’s

recusal are far from compelling. It is hardly surprising that a

number of potential jurors expressed ambivalence about the

death penalty. The fact that a prosecutor is more concerned

with one potential juror’s ambivalence than another is not

necessarily a sign of racial prejudice. Similarly, the fact that

the majority in reviewing the voir dire transcripts thinks that

a seated juror’s responses were no more responsive than

Olanders D.’s is really of little moment. As noted, the trial

judge — who heard Olanders D.’s voir dire — agreed with

the prosecutor that he “demonstrated a lack of ability to

express himself well.” The majority’s supposition that

Olanders D.’s questionnaire responses may not have been

“poor” is not clear or convincing evidence of anything. At

most, the majority’s arguments and assumptions may suggest

that the prosecutor’s evaluation of Olanders D. was not

compelled, but none of them really question the sincerity of

the prosecutor’s reasons or suggest a likelihood of some

unstated improper motive. The majority fails to show that a

fairminded jurist could not have agreed with the California

Supreme Court.

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The only indicia of possible racial bias was the fact that

seven of the eighteen peremptory challenges exercised by the

prosecutor excused African-American and Hispanic jurors. 

If this were enough to compel a finding of racial bias, there

would be no reason for the second and third steps in the

Batson standard or for deference to the trial court’s

determinations. The lack of any compelling evidence of

racial bias is clear when the record in this case is compared to

the prosecutor’s statements in Kesser, 465 F.3d 351. There,

in overcoming the deference due to the state court’s

determinations, we commented: “The racial animus behind

the prosecutor’s strike is clear. When he was asked to explain

why he used a peremptory challenge to eliminate [a juror], he

answered using blatant racial and cultural stereotypes.” Id. at

357. Here, in contrast, all the majority can do is suggest that

other jurors, like Olanders D., were uncomfortable with the

death penalty, failed to offer thoughtful answers, and did not

communicate well. But even if the prosecutor’s perceptions

about Olanders D. were incorrect or not unique, that fact

would not be such compelling evidence of pretext as to justify

a failure to defer to the California Supreme Court’s reasoned

determination that the jurors were excused for proper, raceneutral reasons.

2. Gerardo O.

Gerardo O. was one of the recusals that Ayala challenged

in his second objection. The prosecutor explained his

challenge to Gerardo O. as follows:

I made an observation of [Gerardo] when he

first entered the courtroom on the first day

that the jurors were called into the area.

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At that time, he appeared to not fit in with

anyone else. He was a standoffish type of

individual. His dress and his mannerisms I

felt were not in keeping with the other jurors.

He indicated to us at the beginning that he

was illiterate. Actually, his words were that

he was illiterate, and that he therefore had the

questionnaire translated to him, so that he

could make responses.

I observed him on subsequent occasions when

he came to the court, and observed that he did

not appear to be socializing or mixing with

any of the other jurors, and I also take into

account his responses on the questionnaire

and in the Hovey questioning process, at

which time he expressed that he had no

feeling with regard to the death penalty in

writing.

When being questioned, he said that he was

not sure if he could take someone’s life, or if

he could take someone’s life into his hands.

He further responded in the Hovey process

that there would be eleven other people, that

he felt a little shaky as far as his

responsibilities in this case.

For those reasons, I felt that he would be an

inappropriate juror, and for that reason, I

exercised the peremptory challenge.

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The trial court accepted the prosecutor’s reasons. It noted

that the record supported the prosecutor’s observations and

commented that the recusal was based on Gerardo O.’s

individual traits. The California Supreme Court in rejecting

Ayala’s Wheeler/Batson claim noted that “Gerardo O.

struggled with English and did not understand the

proceedings.” Ayala, 6 P.3d at 206.

The majority does not deny that Gerardo O. stated that he

was illiterate, or that he needed someone to fill out his

questionnaire, or that he dressed differently, or that he did not

mix with the other jurors. See Majority at pp. 45–49. 

Instead, the majority speculates that Ayala’s lawyer might

have shown that despite his own comments, Gerardo O. was

not illiterate, and that Geraldo O.’s “dress and mannerisms

were distinctly Hispanic.”17 Majority at p. 46. It further

muses that the prosecutor’s comments concerning Gerardo

17 The majority’s cited quote from Hernandez v. New York, 500 U.S. 352

(1991), demonstrates that Hernandez is not applicable to this case. The

Supreme Court noted “the prosecutor’s frank admission that his ground for

excusing these jurors related to their ability to speak and understand

Spanish raised a plausible, though not a necessary, inference that language

might be a pretext for what in fact were race-based peremptory

challenges.” Id. at 363. Here, the prosecutor did not mention any concern

with Gerardo O.’s ability to speak Spanish and there does not appear to be

any indication that any juror’s ability to speak Spanish was an issue. 

Instead, the majority, having poured over the record to determine that

Gerardo O., despite his own admission of illiteracy, had “attended college

in the United States,” opines that he “was perfectly capable of reading the

summary of legal issues that was given to prospective jurors.” Majority

at pp. 45–46. It then leaps to the unsupported conclusion that the

prosecutor’s purported reason for striking Gerardo O. was directly related

to his status as someone who spoke Spanish as his first language. 

Majority at p. 46. The majority’s speculation may not be illogical, but it

is far from compelling.

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O.’s manner and aloofness and his ambivalence toward the

death penalty could have been pretexts for an underlying

racial bias.18 Majority at pp. 48–49. Of course, it is

impossible to negate such possibilities, but there is nothing

but the majority’s imagination to fuel its assertions.

19 Here,

the trial judge agreed with the prosecutor’s observations of

Gerardo O. and the California Supreme Court affirmed. The

majority has not presented the type of clear evidence that the

United States Supreme Court has held is necessary to

overcome our deference to state court findings. See Rice,

546 U.S. at 338–39.

3. Robert M.

Robert M. was one of the last persons whose recusal was

challenged. The prosecutor explained his reasons as follows:

As far as [Robert M.] is concerned, Miss

Michaels and I had discussions during the

selection process here in court, even as late as

immediately before the exercise of the last

challenge.

18 The majority also suggests that Gerardo O.’s ambivalence to the death

penalty was no more pronounced than some seated white jurors. Majority

at pp. 48–49. As previously noted, the potential jurors’ attitudes toward

the death penalty was an important consideration for both the defense and

the prosecution. The fact that the prosecutor distinguished between levels

of ambivalence that the majority over twenty years later argues are

indistinguishable is hardly a sign of pretext. Moreover, there is no doubt

that Gerardo O.’s qualifications — professed illiteracy, distinctive dress

and aloofness, and ambivalence to the death penalty — were unique.

 

19 The majority goes so far as to fantasize that “perhaps” unbeknownst

to the trial judge, Gerardo O. “had even organized a dinner for some of

them at his favorite Mexican restaurant.” Majority at p. 47.

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AYALA V. WONG 115

The court would note that I had passed at one

point, leaving [Robert M.] on.

I have always felt some degree of reluctance

with regard to [Robert M.], and my concern

primarily is in the area of whether, after

conviction, [Robert M.] would actually vote

for the death penalty, and it was my view that

taking all of his responses in Hovey into

account, and the — some of his responses

even as late as yesterday — for example, the

following of the Sagon Penn case. It was

Miss Michaels doing the questioning at that

time, and I did not actually — it would have

been possibly a disadvantage or a disservice

to inquire further as to his impressions about

the Sagon Penn case.

I’m concerned about that case because the fact

that Mr. Penn, in a very notorious trial here,

was found not guilty in a second trial, and

allegations of misconduct with regard to the

District Attorney’s office and the police were

certainly rampant in that case.

There’s really no way for me to inquire as to

where [Robert M.] actually stood.

As far as [Robert M.] is concerned, our

scores, a combination of all the factors — 

Mr. Cameron graded [Robert M.] as a four,

Miss Michaels had rated [Robert M.] as a five,

and my score on him was four to a five,

somewhere in that area.

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I had before doing any of the selection

process, resolved that at the very best, we

would not wish to have any jurors on this case

whose combined score was five or less.

In spite of that, I passed once on him, but it is

my view, basically, that because of his

attitudes with regard to the death penalty, such

as in his first response to whether he would

always vote for — well, in the question

number one about whether he would always

vote for guilt, he indicated that it was a

difficult question.

He said that he believed in the death penalty,

but it was hard for him to be involved in the

death penalty.

With regard to questions about whether he

would vote for death, he said no, it would be

hard to say, no, I don’t know what the

evidence is, and Miss Michael’s reasons,

which she expressed to me, and I have to

agree with, is a great degree of concern about

whether if we get to that point he could

actually vote for death, and having that kind

of a question in my mind as I’m trying this

case would be distracting and worrisome to

me during the process of the trial.

The trial judge accepted the prosecutor’s reasons, noting

that although Robert M. “is certainly pro the death penalty,”

his answers varied and “there may well be a legitimate

concern as to whether or not he could impose it.” The court

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further noted that “an appropriate use of a peremptory would

be for a person that any party feels either could not vote for

death or could not vote for life.” In affirming Ayala’s

conviction the California Supreme Court observed “that

Robert M. was less than desirable from the prosecution’s

point of view.” Ayala, 6 P.3d at 206.

Again, the majority does not really question the

prosecutor’s reasons, but speculates that had Ayala’s counsel

been present he might have argued that Robert M.’s

reluctance to impose the death penalty was not different from

other jurors’ reluctance. Majority at pp. 50. In addition, the

majority does not deny that Robert M. had stated that he had

followed the Sagon Penn case, but argues that he only

mentioned this briefly.

20 Majority at p. 51. Nonetheless,

Robert M.’s interest in a recent notorious criminal case that

involved misconduct by the prosecutor and resulted in a not

guilty verdict is a legitimate non-discriminatory reason for

recusal by the prosecutor.

20 The extent of the majority’s speculation is illustrated by its argument

that because another juror who was seated mentioned that he was aware

of the capital case People v. Harris, 623 P.2d 240 (Cal. 1981), the

prosecutor’s concern with Robert M.’s interest in the Sagon Penn case

may have been pretextual. Majority at pp. 67–68. This argument assumes

that somehow the Harris case was similar to the Sagon Penn case. This

seems unlikely as the crime in Harris took place in 1978, some eleven

years before the jury selection process in this case. Moreover, unlike the

alleged verdict in the Sagon Penn case, Harris was found guilty and the

California Supreme Court’s opinion, which issued in 1981, did not find

any serious misconduct by the district attorney.

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4. The Other Jurors

The only other recused juror that the majority mentions is

George S. See Majority at pp. 40–41 n.17. The prosecutor

explained that he had recused George S. because he (a) stated

that he had sat on a prior jury and “was the one hold-out with

regard to whatever issue was being presented at that time”;

(b) was equivocal on the death penalty, (c) had been rejected

as a police officer candidate, and (d) placed undue emphasis

on the Bible. The trial judge commented that the prosecutor’s

observations were accurate. The majority does not deny that

the prosecution offered these individualized grounds for the

recusal. Instead, the majority dismisses the fact that George

S. had been a holdout juror with the comment that it was a

civil action and speculates that George S.’s alleged emphasis

on the Bible “cannot be evaluated at all” because of the loss

of the questionnaires. See Majority at pp. 40–41 n.17. Again,

perhaps the majority’s assertions suggest that the prosecutor’s

views were not compelled, but they do not really undermine

their reasonableness or sincerity.

There were valid nondiscriminatory grounds for recusing

the remaining three minority jurors. Galileo S. was recused

because he (a) displayed a non-conformist attitude to the

justice system, (b) had more run-ins with the law than he

admitted, and (c) had an attitude that might create alienation

and hostility on the part of other jurors. Luis M. was

challenged because he (a) expressed ambivalence on the

death penalty, (b) had investigated the case on his own, and

(c) left the military with a low rank suggesting some sort of

misconduct or inability to perform. Barbara S. was

challenged because (a) her responses to oral questions were

slow, (b) she had an empty look in her eyes and seemed out

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AYALA V. WONG 119

of tune with what was going on, and (c) her written and oral

answers were incomplete and non-responsive.

As with the other recused jurors, the prosecution team

offered individualized reasons for each of these recusals. 

There is no blatant racism, no reference to stereotypes (veiled

or otherwise), and no discernable pattern of discrimination in

the reasons advanced by the prosecution. Nonetheless, these

recusals are susceptible to the type of speculative challenges

that the majority hurls at the recusals of Olanders D., Gerardo

O., and Robert M. In all likelihood, other jurors expressed

ambivalence and equivalence about the death penalty, other

jurors offered slow or incomplete responses, and other jurors

probably had been denied employment or performed poorly

in a job. These might be appropriate avenues to explore at

the time that a recusal is made. But we are reviewing a 1989

state trial pursuant to AEDPA, and the Supreme Court in its

recent opinions has reiterated that (a) Batson issues turn

largely on evaluations of credibility, (b) the trial court’s

determination is entitled to great deference, (c) the

determination must be sustained unless it is clearlyerroneous,

and (d) AEDPA demands that state-court decisions be given

the benefit of the doubt. See Felkner, 131 S. Ct. at 1307.

The California Supreme Court may not have been

compelled to conclude that “the challenged jurors were

excluded for proper, race-neutral reasons.” Ayala, 6 P.3d at

204. But its conclusion was objectively reasonable. That is,

Ayala has not shown that the California Supreme Court’s

ruling “was so lacking in justification that there was an error

well understood and comprehended in existing law beyond

any possibility for fairminded disagreement.” Richter, 131 S.

Ct. at 786–87. As in Richter, the majority’s opinion

“illustrates a lack of deference to the state court’s

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120 AYALA V. WONG

determination and an improper intervention in state criminal

processes, contrary to the purpose and mandate of AEDPA

and to the now well-settled meaning and function of habeas

corpus in the federal system.” Id. at 787.

IV

The Supreme Court decided Batson v. Kentucky in 1986,

a year after Ayala killed three men and three years before his

murder conviction. In Batson, the Supreme Court declined

“to formulate particular procedures to be followed upon a

defendant’s timely objection to a prosecutor’s challenges.” 

476 U.S. at 99. I would hold that Ayala’s claim that he had

a constitutional right to have counsel present when the

prosecutor offered its reasons for the challenged recusals was

not dictated by precedent when Ayala’s conviction became

final, and thus is Teague-barred.

Ultimately, however, this case turns on the reasonableness

of the California Supreme Court’s 2000 opinion that the

absence of defense counsel and the loss of jury questionnaires

were harmless error beyond a reasonable doubt as a matter of

federal law. Ayala, 6 P.3d at 204. Following the Supreme

Court’s pointed guidance in Richter, 131 S. Ct. 770, and

Williams, 133 S. Ct. 1088, we must conclude that the

California Supreme Court adjudicated Ayala’s federal claims

on their merits and thus apply AEDPA’s deferential standard

of review.21

21 I do not agree with some of the majority’s characterizations of my

dissent. I have set forth my reasons in this dissent and trust the reader will

be able to discern the respective merits of the majority and dissent without

further assistance. To the extent the majority accuses me of relying

heavily on recent Supreme Court opinions such as Richter, 131 S. Ct. 770,

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This standard of review mandates that we determine

whether fairminded jurists could agree with the California

Supreme Court. In other words, we can grant relief only if no

fairminded jurist could find that the exclusion of defense

counsel and the loss of questionnaires did not prevent Ayala

from prevailing on his Batson claim. Here, the evidence of

valid non-pretextual reasons for the prosecutor’s recusals

renders the state court’s decision objectively reasonable.

Because the majority fails to appreciate that Ayala’s

federal claim is Teague-barred, and applies a de novo

standard of review, despite the Supreme Court’s contrary

directions, I dissent.

ORDER

The opinion and dissenting opinion, filed on September

13, 2013, and published at 730 F.3d 831, are replaced by the

amended opinion and amended dissenting opinion filed

concurrently with this Order.

Judges Reinhardt and Wardlaw voted to deny the petition

for rehearing en banc. Judge Callahan voted to grant the

petition. A judge requested a vote on whether to rehear this

matter en banc. The matter failed to receive a majority of the

votes of the nonrecused active judges in favor of en banc

consideration. Fed. R. App. P. 35. The request for rehearing

en banc is DENIED. No further petitions will be entertained. 

see Majority at p. 35–36, n.14, the accusation is accurate.

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Judge Ikuta’s dissent from denial of rehearing en banc is

filed concurrently with this Order.

IKUTA, Circuit Judge, joined by O’SCANNLAIN,

TALLMAN, BYBEE, CALLAHAN, BEA, M. SMITH, and

N.R. SMITH, Circuit Judges, dissenting from the denial of

rehearing en banc:

The Supreme Court has twice before rejected the

approach to habeas review that the panel majority adopts

here. In two prior habeas opinions, Richter v. Hickman,

578 F.3d 944 (9th Cir. 2009) (en banc), and Williams v.

Cavazos, 646 F.3d 626 (9th Cir. 2011), we brushed aside the

deference we owe a state court’s adjudication of a petitioner’s

claim under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty

Act of 1996 (AEDPA), 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d), and reviewed a

petitioner’s claim de novo. The Supreme Court unanimously

reversed both of these opinions. It held that we must defer to

a state court denial of a federal claim even if the state court

issued only a summary denial, Harrington v. Richter, 131 S.

Ct. 770, 784–85 (2011), and even if the state court issued a

reasoned opinion that did not expressly reject the federal

claim, Johnson v. Williams, 133 S. Ct. 1088, 1094–96 (2013).

Undeterred, the panel majority now tries yet another route

to de novo review. It reasons that the Supreme Court has not

yet directly told us that we must defer to a state court decision

holding that any potential federal constitutional error was

harmless. Therefore, the panel majority concludes, we can

review such a claim de novo, free of AEDPA deference. In

reaching this conclusion, the panel majority ignores the clear

command of AEDPA and the Supreme Court, and creates a

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AYALA V. WONG 123

circuit split. Because we should interpret AEDPA in

accordance with the statutory language and the direction

provided by the Supreme Court, I respectfully dissent from

the court’s failure to rehear this case en banc.

I

The length and complexityof the panel majority’s opinion

cannot disguise the fact that it circumvents the Supreme

Court’s ruling in Richter and Williams that “a federal habeas

court must presume that the federal claim was adjudicated on

the merits.” Williams, 133 S. Ct. at 1096. Here, Juan Ayala

presented his claim—that the Constitution required defense

counsel to be present when the prosecutor presented his

reasons for striking certain jurors—to the California Supreme

Court, and the court rejected that claim. Twice.

The facts underlying Ayala’s claim are straightforward. 

Ayala was charged with multiple murders. During jury

selection, he argued that the prosecutor was striking jury

panelists on the basis of their race or ethnicity in violation of

People v. Wheeler, 22 Cal. 3d 258 (1978),

1

and its federal

analogue, Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79 (1986). See

1 Wheeler presaged Batson by interpreting the California Constitution to

prohibit race-based peremptory challenges. See Wade v. Terhune,

202 F.3d 1190, 1192 (9th Cir. 2000). The California Supreme Court has

stated that “[s]ubstantially the same principles apply under Batson” as

under Wheeler. People v. Alvarez, 14 Cal. 4th 155, 193 (1996). Although

there are some differences between the Wheeler and Batson standards, see

Wade, 202 F.3d at 1196–97, those differences are not applicable here. 

Accordingly, “because we are reviewing [Ayala’s] petition for a writ of

habeas corpus under 28 U.S.C. § 2254, we generally refer to Batson in

analyzing his claims.” Mitleider v. Hall, 391 F.3d 1039, 1042 n.2 (9th

Cir. 2004).

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People v. Ayala (Ayala I), 24 Cal. 4th 243, 259–60 (2000). 

The trial court asked the prosecutor to explain his reasons for

those challenges, but the prosecutor expressed concern about

doing so in open court for fear of revealing his trial strategy. 

Id. at 260. To alleviate this concern, the trial court held three

ex parte hearings to consider the prosecutor’s reasons for his

challenges, and each time found that the prosecutor was not

challenging jury panelists because of race or ethnicity. Id.

On direct appeal to the California Supreme Court, Ayala

challenged his exclusion from the ex parte Batson hearings. 

The court addressed the issue at length. See id. at 259–69. It

began by reciting the Batson/Wheeler procedure for

determining whether a prosecutor’s peremptory challenges

were discriminatory. Id. at 260–61. First, the defendant must

make a prima facie case that the prosecutor used his

peremptory challenges to exclude “members of a cognizable

group” because of their group association. Id. at 260. 

Second, the burden shifts to the prosecutor “to provide a raceneutral explanation for the exercise of peremptory

challenges.” Id. Third, the trial court must determine

“whether those stated reasons are untrue and pretextual.” Id.

at 261.

After explaining the necessary steps in a court’s

adjudication of a Batson/Wheeler claim, the California

Supreme Court held that, so long as “the inquiry proceeds

within the general framework just articulated, no particular

procedures are constitutionally required.” Id. The court’s

conclusion rested on Powers v. Ohio, 499 U.S. 400 (1991),

which stated, with respect to Batson hearings, that “‘[i]t

remains for the trial courts to develop rules, without

unnecessarydisruption of the jury selection process, to permit

legitimate and well-founded objections to the use of

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AYALA V. WONG 125

peremptory challenges as a mask for race prejudice.’” Ayala

I, 24 Cal. 4th at 261 (quoting Powers, 499 U.S. at 416). This

conclusion resolved Ayala’s federal constitutional claim that

Batson required the trial court to include the defendant or

defense counsel in the hearings on the prosecutor’s reasons

for striking jury panelists.

While rejecting Ayala’s constitutional claim, the court

went on to consider “whether it was error to exclude

defendant from participating in the hearings on his Wheeler

motions” as a matter of California law. Id. at 262. Because

“[t]he question whether ex parte communications are proper

in ruling on a Wheeler motion ha[d] not arisen in California

decisional law,” the court surveyed the legal landscape, citing

cases from the Fourth, Sixth, Seventh, Eighth, Ninth, and

Eleventh Circuits, as well as cases from New York,

Maryland, and Texas that had considered analogous

procedural issues. Id. It noted that “[w]hile some decisions

have tolerated an ex parte Batson hearing procedure on the

ground that the United States Constitution permits it,” id.

(citing United States v. Tucker, 836 F.2d 334, 340 (7th Cir.

1988), and United States v. Davis, 809 F.2d 1194, 1202 (6th

Cir. 1987)), most courts to have considered the issue

determined that ex parte proceedings were “poor procedure

and should not be conducted unless compelling reasons

justify them,” id. at 262–63. Aligning itself with the

majority, the court held that, as a matter of state procedure,

trial courts should not hold ex parte Batson/Wheeler hearings,

and therefore “that error occurred under state law” in Ayala’s

case. Id. at 263–64. Nevertheless, after a careful review of

the record pertaining to the seven challenged jurors, including

the transcripts of the exchanges between the prosecutor and

the judge, the court concluded that the prosecutor’s

peremptory challenges did not exclude a cognizable group

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from the jury on a discriminatory basis. Id. at 264–68. 

Consequently, although the trial court erred in light of the

newly adopted state procedure, “the error was harmless.” Id.

at 268. And any potential federal error “was harmless beyond

a reasonable doubt,” according to the California Supreme

Court. Id. at 269 (citing Chapman v. California, 386 U.S. 18,

24 (1967)).

In short, the California SupremeCourt considered Ayala’s

Batson claim, rejected it on the merits, and followed that up

by holding that any potential error was harmless. Given that

Richter, 131 S. Ct. at 784–85, and Williams, 133 S. Ct. at

1094–96, require us to presume that the state court

adjudicated a claim on the merits when the claim was

presented to the state court and the state court denied relief,

there is no doubt the court adjudicated Ayala’s claim on the

merits here. Therefore, the only question is whether the state

court’s adjudication of Ayala’s Batson claim was an

unreasonable application of Supreme Court precedent.

As the California Supreme Court pointed out, “no

particular procedures are constitutionally required.” Ayala I,

24 Cal. 4th at 261. Batson itself “decline[d] . . . to formulate

particular procedures to be followed upon a defendant’s

timely objection to a prosecutor’s challenges,” 476 U.S. at 99,

and the Supreme Court has left it to the lower courts to

“develop [the] rules,” Powers, 499 U.S. at 416. No

subsequent Supreme Court case has given further instruction

on Batson procedures, and certainly no Supreme Court case

has foreclosed the use of ex parte proceedings. Therefore, the

California Supreme Court’s rejection of Ayala’sBatson claim

in this case was not contrary to, or an unreasonable

application of, clearly established Supreme Court caselaw,

and we should have affirmed the district court.

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II

Contrary to Supreme Court precedent, the plain language

of AEDPA, and the decisions of our sister circuits, the panel

majority here reasons that no AEDPA deference is owed to

the state court’s opinion. Am. Maj. Op. at 5, 11–12. 

Notwithstanding the presumption established by Richter and

Williams, the panel majority concludes that the state court did

not adjudicate Ayala’s claim on the merits because the state

court never analyzed the merits of Ayala’s Batson claim and

held only that any federal error would have been harmless. 

As a threshold matter, this misreads the state court’s opinion. 

TheCalifornia Supreme Court addressed and rejected Ayala’s

Batson claim on the ground that no particular procedures are

constitutionally required, and only later reinforced its

rejection of the Batson claim by holding that any potential

error was harmless. But even if the state court had limited

itself to holding that any federal error was harmless, the panel

majority’s analysis of whether the state court adjudicated

Ayala’s claim on the merits is wrong.

Williams held that we must presume that a state court

adjudicated a federal claim on the merits, and that this

presumption is rebutted only “[w]hen the evidence leads very

clearly to the conclusion that a federal claim was

inadvertently overlooked in state court.” 133 S. Ct. at 1097.2

2 As Williams demonstrated, this presumption is quite robust. In

Williams, the California Court of Appeal had rejected a petitioner’s claim

regarding the dismissal of a juror, citing only a California Supreme Court

opinion, People v. Cleveland, 25 Cal. 4th 466 (2001), and other principles

ofstate law. People v. Taylor, No. B137365, 2002 WL 66140, at *8 (Cal.

Ct. App. Jan. 18, 2002). Cleveland, in turn, had discussed but rejected

two federal circuit court opinions that themselves addressed the Sixth

Amendment. 25 Cal. 4th at 480–84. Williams concluded that the state

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Here, “the evidence leads very clearly to the conclusion” that

the California Supreme Court did not inadvertently overlook

Ayala’s Batson claim: it discussed the claim, found no error,

ruled that any potential error would be harmless, and denied

relief overall. Under Williams, therefore, we must presume

that the state court adjudicated Ayala’s claim on the merits,

and the only question left is whether that adjudication was an

unreasonable application of Supreme Court precedent. See

28 U.S.C. § 2254(d).

The panel majority attempts to evade this conclusion by

insisting that the rebuttable presumption discussed in Richter

and Williams is rebutted in this case by the “principle of

constitutional avoidance.” Am. Maj. Op. at 19–20, 23. The

panel majority reasons that “the California Supreme Court

had no reason to reach Ayala’s federal constitutional claim”

because it could resolve the claim as a matter of state law,

and “under long established legal principles, the California

Supreme Court had every reason not to decide unnecessarily

a question of federal constitutional law.” Id. at 24. Because

there was no compelling reason for the California Supreme

Court to have evaluated the claim of constitutional error, the

panel majority concludes that the California Supreme Court

did not adjudicate Ayala’s Batson claim on the merits. Id. at

court’s mere mention ofCleveland was enough to show that the state court

understood it was resolving a question of federal constitutional law. 

133 S. Ct. at 1098–99. Accordingly, Williams held that the state court had

adjudicated the petitioner’s Sixth Amendment claim on the merits, and

rejected the NinthCircuit’s conclusion to the contrary. Id. at 1099. Given

the Supreme Court’s determination that the state court adjudicated a

petitioner’s federal claimbecause it referenced an earlier state opinion that

itself mentioned federal circuit court opinions, the California Supreme

Court’s direct discussion and rejection of Ayala’s Batson claim in this

case was a clear adjudication of that claim on the merits.

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23–25.3It is obvious that this conclusion directly reverses the

presumption in Williams. Where Williams would hold that

we presume a state court reached the federal issue, the panel

majority holds that we presume the state court did everything

in its power to avoid reaching that federal issue.

The panel majority supports its reverse presumption by

reference to Supreme Court cases granting relief to habeas

petitioners raising ineffective assistance of counsel claims. 

Id. at 21–22 (citing Porter v. McCollum, 558 U.S. 30 (2009);

Rompilla v. Beard, 545 U.S. 374 (2005); Wiggins v. Smith,

539 U.S. 510 (2003)). But these cases offer no support for

the panel majority’s novel theory. In those cases, a state

court rejected a petitioner’s ineffective assistance claim on

either the deficiency or prejudice prong, and did not reach the

other prong. Applying § 2254(d), the Supreme Court

concluded in each case that the state court’s adjudication of

3 A confusing aspect of the panel majority’s opinion is its observation

that “if we were required to determine whether the California Supreme

Court adjudicated Ayala’s claim of federal constitutional error on its

merits in favor of the petitioner or the state, we would hold without

question that the California Supreme Court found error in petitioner’s

favor under both state law and federal constitutional law.” Am. Maj. Op.

at 18 (emphases altered). The panel majority refers to this scenario as

“Option 1.” Id. at 14. “Option 1” would present a very different case:

Had the California Supreme Court held that the trial court committed a

Batson error, and had Ayala challenged only the court’s determination

under Chapman that such error was harmless, we would have to decide the

open question of how AEDPA would apply to that type of adjudication on

the merits. But the panel majority does not resolve this question, and

instead makes the fatal error of holding that the California Supreme Court

did not adjudicate Ayala’s federal claim on the merits, whether in favor of

Ayala, see id. at 12 n.3, 15 n.4, or against him. Thus, while the panel

majority discusses the “Option 1” scenario at great length, it elects instead

to presume (contrary to Richter and Williams) that the state court avoided

an “Option 1” scenario by deciding Ayala’s claims on state law grounds.

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one of the Strickland prongs was contrary to, or an

unreasonable application of, Strickland. Because the state

court did not reach the other prong, the Supreme Court

addressed it de novo. Porter, 558 U.S. at 39; Rompilla,

545 U.S. at 390; Wiggins, 539 U.S. at 534. These cases are

consistent with Williams, because the state court’s express

refusal to reach one of the Strickland prongs rebuts the

presumption that the state court adjudicated that prong on the

merits. Moreover, because the Supreme Court determined

that the state court’s analysis of one prong was an

unreasonable application of Strickland, it was freed from

AEDPA deference, and could review the other prong of the

Strickland claim de novo. Porter, 558 U.S. at 39; Rompilla,

545 U.S. at 390; Wiggins, 539 U.S. at 534.4

Moreover, the Supreme Court has never suggested that

when a state court rejects a petitioner’s claim because any

potential error was harmless, we can review the claim de

novo because that claim was not fully adjudicated on the

merits. Such a conclusion contravenes Richter and Williams,

which instruct us to presume that a state court has adjudicated

a claim on the merits and to apply AEDPA deference when a

state court has denied relief overall, regardless of the grounds

for denying relief. The panel majority’s interpretation also

contradicts the commonsense interpretation of “adjudicated

on merits.” We have held that the term “adjudicated on the

merits” as used in § 2254(d) means that “the petition . . . was

4 Another case cited by the panel majority, Cone v. Bell, 556 U.S. 449

(2009), is equally inapplicable. Am. Maj. Op. at 22–23. In Cone, the

Supreme Court held that when a state court erroneously finds a procedural

default and therefore has not reached the merits of a claim, a federal court

can do so. 556 U.S. at 469–72. No one suggests that Ayala procedurally

defaulted his Batson claim.

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either granted or denied, [and] . . . that the grant or denial

rest[s] on substantive, rather than procedural, grounds.” 

Lambert v. Blodgett, 393 F.3d 943, 966 (9th Cir. 2004); see

also Barker v. Fleming, 423 F.3d 1085, 1092 (9th Cir. 2005). 

A determination that any error was harmless is a denial of

relief on “substantive . . . grounds.” Accordingly, a decision

that any error was harmless is an adjudication on the merits,

and we should apply § 2254(d) to that adjudication. The

majority’s failure to do so is contrary to the command of

§ 2254(d) and our precedents interpreting it.

Not only does the panel majority’s approach contradict

AEDPA and our precedent, it also conflicts with the

conclusion reached by our sister circuits. As the Tenth

Circuit recently explained, “[w]here a state court assumes a

constitutional violation in order to address whether the

defendant was actually harmed by the violation, as here, the

state court takes the claim on the merits; it just disposes of it

on alternative merits-based reasoning.” Littlejohn v.

Trammell, 704 F.3d 817, 850 n.17 (10th Cir. 2013). The

Tenth Circuit concluded that because the state court rejected

petitioner’s constitutional claim on the ground that any error

was harmless, it “render[ed] a decision that is on the merits

for purposes of AEDPA.” Id. at 850 n.17. Accordingly, the

Tenth Circuit proceeded to consider whether the adjudication

of the constitutional claim was an unreasonable application of

Supreme Court precedent. Id. The Seventh and Eighth

Circuits have adopted a similar interpretation of “adjudicated

on the merits.” See Anderson v. Cowan, 227 F.3d 893, 898

(7th Cir. 2000) (considering a state court’s rejection of a

Bruton error on the ground that any such error was harmless

beyond a reasonable doubt, and concluding that this rejection

of the Bruton claim was not contrary to, or an unreasonable

application of, clearly established Supreme Court precedent);

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Whitmore v. Kemna, 213 F.3d 431, 433 (8th Cir. 2000)

(“[W]here the state court [] has conducted a Chapman

harmless error analysis, . . . the claim has been ‘adjudicated

on the merits’ in state court.”). The panel majority’s

conclusion that claims rejected on harmless error grounds are

not “adjudicated on the merits” thus conflicts with all other

circuits to have considered the question.

This is not a case-specific error that will be confined to

the facts of this opinion. The panel majority’s approach sets

the groundwork for authorizing federal courts to review a

habeas petition de novo whenever a state appellate court

rejects a petitioner’s federal claim on harmlessness grounds,

contrary to the Supreme Court’s admonition to defer to the

state court’s decisions, and the general rule that § 2254(d)

barely “stops short of imposing a complete bar on federal

court relitigation of claims already rejected in state

proceedings,” Richter, 131 S. Ct. at 786. The consequences

of the panel majority’s approach will reverberate throughout

this circuit. The state courts within our circuit routinely

resolve claims of federal error on the basis that any potential

error was harmless. See, e.g., People v. Thomas, 54 Cal. 4th

908, 936–37 (2012); People v. Loy, 52 Cal. 4th 46, 69–71

(2011); Smith v. State, 111 Nev. 499, 505–06 (1995); State v.

Walton, 311 Or. 223, 229–31 (1991); State v. Whelchel, 115

Wash. 2d 708, 728–30 (1990); Braham v. State, 571 P.2d

631, 645–48 (Alaska 1977). Under the panel majority’s

rationale, we would give AEDPA deference to none of these

determinations.

III

Not only does the panel majority commit serious errors in

its AEDPA analysis, it lands yet another blow to our AEDPA

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jurisprudence by concluding that we review a state court’s

harmless error analysis under an exceptionally nondeferential standard. After erroneously concluding that the

California Supreme Court did not adjudicate Ayala’s Batson

claim on the merits, Am. Maj. Op. at 23–25, and determining

under de novo review that the state trial court committed a

Batson error in holding an ex parte hearing with the

prosecutor, id. at 26, the panel majority purports to apply the

prejudice standard set forth in Brecht v. Abrahamson,

507 U.S. 619 (1993), to review the California Supreme

Court’s conclusion that any federal error was harmless, Am.

Maj. Op. at 33–54.

But the panel majority’s application of the Brecht

prejudice standard contradicts the Supreme Court’s direction

in Fry v. Pliler, 551 U.S. 112 (2007). Under Brecht, a federal

habeas court that determines there is constitutional error

cannot grant relief unless the error “had substantial and

injurious effect or influence in determining the jury’s

verdict.” 507 U.S. at 638 (internal quotation marks omitted). 

Before Pliler, a federal court faced a conundrum in

considering a state court’s decision that a constitutional error

was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt under Chapman. 

The federal habeas court had to determine whether to: 

(1) apply § 2254(d), and ask whether the state court’s

rejection of the petitioner’s claim on harmlessness grounds

was based on an unreasonable application of Chapman,

(2) apply the general harmless error standard for habeas cases

in Brecht, or (3) do both.

In Pliler, the Supreme Court sought to simplify the

harmlessness assessment for federal courts and ensure that

state courts received proper deference. It held that federal

courts should apply the Brecht standard in every case because

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134 AYALA V. WONG

it is more deferential to state courts. 551 U.S. at 119–20. 

Pliler explained that before AEDPA, the Supreme Court

applied the Brecht standard of review to consider habeas

claims of state trial errors, because Brecht provided a “more

forgiving standard of review” than Chapman. Id. at 116. The

Court then rejected the argument that the passage of AEDPA

replaced Brecht with a more petitioner-friendly standard: 

“Given our frequent recognition that AEDPA limited rather

than expanded the availability of habeas relief, it is

implausible that, without saying so, AEDPA replaced the

Brecht standard of actual prejudice [] with the more liberal

AEDPA/Chapman standard which requires only that the state

court’s harmless-beyond-a-reasonable-doubt determination be

unreasonable.” Id. at 119–20 (internal quotation marks and

citations omitted). Thus, it made sense to use the stricter

Brecht standard in all habeas cases.

Nevertheless, given Pliler’s determination that the Brecht

standard is more deferential to state courts than an

AEDPA/Chapman analysis, it logically follows that if the

state court’s determination that an error is harmless beyond

a reasonable doubt is not an unreasonable application of

Chapman, then there is no prejudice under Brecht. See

Pliler, 551 U.S. at 120 (Brecht “obviously subsumes”

AEDPA/Chapman review). Anything else would be

inconsistent with Pliler’s reasoning. It would also be

contrary to § 2254(d), which provides that a federal court

cannot grant the writ unless the state court’s adjudication of

a claim resulted in a decision that was contrary to, or an

unreasonable application of, clearly established Supreme

Court precedent. See Cudjo v. Ayers, 698 F.3d 752, 768 (9th

Cir. 2012) (stating that “if the California Supreme Court had

appropriately applied the Chapman analysis in analyzing this

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Constitutional error, this court would be required to defer to

that analysis under AEDPA unless it was unreasonable”).

Applying this reasoning here, the California Supreme

Court’s determination that the procedure adopted by the trial

court in holding an ex parte hearing was harmless beyond a

reasonable doubt was not an unreasonable application of

Chapman. The California Supreme Court devoted several

pages to a meticulous review of the trial court’s decision

regarding the seven jurors who were excluded and gave wellreasoned and supported explanations for why “the challenged

jurors were excluded for proper, race-neutral reasons.” Ayala

I, 24 Cal. 4th at 264.

Because we would be compelled to defer to the state court

under an AEDPA/Chapman framework, we necessarily

should find no Brecht prejudice. See Pliler, 551 U.S. at 120. 

In contrast, the panel majority engages in not just de novo

legal analysis, but de novo review of the record that piles

speculation upon speculation instead of giving due deference

to the finder of fact.5See Batson, 476 U.S. at 98 n.21. The

5 One particularly striking example of the panel majority’s highly

speculative approach is worth mentioning here. The panel majority offers

the following hypothesis regarding howAyala’s input might have changed

the trial court’s conclusion that the prosecutor’s reason for challenging one

of the potential jurors was a legitimate nondiscriminatory reason (the

panel majority discusses only three of the seven):

An inference of racial bias might [] have been drawn

from the prosecutor’s claim that Gerardo O. was

challenged because he did not dress or act like other

jurors, and did not mix or socialize with them. It is

likely that Gerardo O.’s dress and mannerisms were

distinctly Hispanic. Perhaps in the late 1980s Hispanic

males in San Diego County were more likely than

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136 AYALA V. WONG

panel majority’s erroneous application of Brecht contradicts

Pliler and dangerously muddles our caselaw.

IV

In sum, the panel majority’s path to de novo review is

contrary to the plain language of AEDPA, which precludes

granting the writ unless the state court’s adjudication of a

claim “resulted in a decision that was contrary to, or involved

an unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal

law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United

States.” 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1). The panel majority hops

over AEDPA’s “bar on federal court relitigation of claims

already rejected in state proceedings,” Richter, 131 S. Ct. at

786, with a novel theory that ignores recent Supreme Court

jurisprudence and conflicts with our sister circuits. In fact,

the panel majority’s opinion raises every red flag that should

have prompted us to rehear a case en banc. The approach to

AEDPA embodied in the panel majority's opinion has already

struck out twice at the Supreme Court. I fear that with this

case, we are looking at a hat trick. Because we should have

corrected these errors ourselves, rather than asking the

members of other racial or ethnic groups in the area to

wear a particular style or color of shirt, and Gerardo O.

was wearing such a shirt (and for this reason did not ‘fit

in,’ in the prosecutor’s mind, with the other jurors). If

so, and if defense counsel were able to bring this fact to

the trial court’s attention, the prosecution’s explanation

that it struck Gerardo O. because of his dress and

mannerisms would provide compelling support for

Ayala’s claim that the strike was actually raciallymotivated.

Am. Maj. Op. at 46. This sort of conjecture in the face of a contrary

determination by the trier of fact has no place in analyzing prejudice.

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AYALA V. WONG 137

Supreme Court to weigh in a third time, I respectfully dissent

from the denial of rehearing en banc.

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