Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca9-13-35443/USCOURTS-ca9-13-35443-0/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

GERALD ROSS PIZZUTO, JR.,

Petitioner-Appellant,

v.

AL RAMIREZ, Warden of Idaho

Maximum Security Institute,

Respondent-Appellee.

No. 13-35443

D.C. No.

1:92-cv-00241-

BLW

OPINION

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the District of Idaho

B. Lynn Winmill, Chief District Judge, Presiding

Argued and Submitted

September 17, 2014—San Francisco, California

Filed April 22, 2015

Before: Raymond C. Fisher, Ronald M. Gould,

and Johnnie B. Rawlinson, Circuit Judges.

Opinion by Judge Gould

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2 PIZZUTO V. RAMIREZ

SUMMARY*

Habeas Corpus

The panel affirmed the district court’s denial of an Idaho

state prisoner’s motion under Fed. R. Civ. P. 60(b) and 60(d)

for relief from a judgment denying his habeas corpus petition

challenging his conviction and capitalsentence for two counts

of first-degree murder, two counts of felony murder, and one

count of grand theft.

The panel concluded that the prisoner’s arguments –

(1) that Martinez v. Ryan, 132 S. Ct. 1309 (2012), gives cause

for the state-law procedural default of three of the claims he

raised in his initial federal habeas petition, and (2) that the

state’s lawyers perpetrated a fraud on the federal district court

– fall within the scope of permissible Rule 60(b) motions and

are not a disguised second or successive habeas corpus

petition.

The panel declined to extend Martinez to cover claims

other than ineffective assistance of trial or appellate counsel

to excuse procedural default. The panel held that the

prisoner’s two claims detailing the alleged biases and errors

of a state court judge who presided over the guilt and

sentencing phases of his trial are not the type of claims that

can be pursued under Martinez. The panel held that the

prisoner’s claim that his trial and appellate attorney had a

conflict of interest based on his relationship with the state

trial judge is a Sixth Amendment ineffective-assistance-of-

* 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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PIZZUTO V. RAMIREZ 3

counsel claim eligible for consideration under Martinez. But

the panel held that the conflict-of-interest claim is

unsupported by the record and thus does not establish cause

to excuse procedural default.

The panel held that the prisoner’s contention that the state

Attorney General’s office perpetrated a fraud on the district

court has so little basis in the record as to be wholly

unpersuasive. The panel therefore agreed with the district

court’s denial of the prisoner’s motion under Rules 60(b) and

60(d) for relief on that basis. 

COUNSEL

Heather E. Williams, Federal Defender; Joseph Schlesinger

and Joan M. Fisher (argued), Assistant Federal Defenders,

Office of the Federal Defender for the Eastern District of

California, Sacramento, California, for Petitioner-Appellant.

Lawrence G. Wasden, Attorney General of Idaho; L. LaMont

Anderson (argued), Deputy Attorney General, Capital

Litigation Unit Chief, Boise, Idaho,forRespondent-Appellee.

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4 PIZZUTO V. RAMIREZ

OPINION

GOULD, Circuit Judge:

Idaho state prisoner Gerald Ross Pizzuto, Jr., appeals

from the denial of his motion under Federal Rules of Civil

Procedure 60(b) and 60(d) for relief from the district court’s

judgment denying his petition for a writ of habeas corpus. 

Pizzuto, who has been sentenced to death, contends: (1) that

Martinez v. Ryan, 132 S. Ct. 1309 (2012), established the

kind of extraordinary circumstances needed to justify

reopening the judgment under Rule 60(b)(6), and that three of

his claims for post-conviction relief relating to judicial bias

and his trial counsel’s conflict of interest, which were

rejected by the Idaho Supreme Court as procedurally barred,

are in fact eligible for consideration under Martinez; and

(2) that he is entitled to relief under Rules 60(b)(6) and

60(d)(3) because the states’ attorneys had perpetrated a fraud

on the federal district court. We have jurisdiction under 28

U.S.C. § 1291. We conclude that Pizzuto’s claims relating to

judicial bias do not fall within Martinez’s exception, his

claim relating to his counsel’s conflict of interest does not

satisfy our circuit’s test for establishing cause to excuse

procedural default under Martinez, and he has not established

a factual basis to show that the state’s attorneys perpetrated

a fraud on the court during his federal habeas proceedings. 

We affirm.

I

In 1986, Pizzuto was convicted of two counts of firstdegree murder, two counts of felony murder, one count of

robbery (which was later vacated by the Idaho Supreme

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PIZZUTO V. RAMIREZ 5

Court), and one count of grand theft. The Idaho Supreme

Court summarized his offenses:

Pizzuto approached [Berta Louise Herndon

and her nephew, Delbert Dean Herndon] with

a .22 caliber rifle as they arrived at their

mountain cabin and made them enter the

cabin. While inside, he tied the Her[n]dons’

wrists behind their backs and bound their legs

in order to steal their money. Some time later,

he bludgeoned Berta Herndon to death with

hammer blows to her head and killed Del

Herndon by bludgeoning him in the head with

a hammer and shooting him between the eyes. 

Pizzuto murdered the Her[n]dons just for the

sake of killing and subsequently joked and

bragged about the killings to his associates.

Pizzuto v. State, 202 P.3d 642, 645 (Idaho 2008); see also

Pizzuto v. Blades, 673 F.3d 1003, 1004 (9th Cir. 2012);

Pizzuto v. Arave, 280 F.3d 949, 952–53 (9th Cir. 2002),

dissent amended and superseded in part, 385 F.3d 1247 (9th

Cir. 2004).

Pizzuto’s state petition for post-conviction relief was

denied by the state district court, and the Idaho Supreme

Court affirmed. State v. Pizzuto, 810 P.2d 680 (Idaho 1991). 

At trial, Pizzuto was represented by Nick Chenoweth and

Scott Wayman, who also represented him during this first

state post-conviction relief petition. During the postconviction proceedings, Chenoweth and Wayman filed a

motion to disqualify Judge George Reinhardt, who had

presided over Pizzuto’s guilt and sentencing phase trials, on

the grounds that Judge Reinhardt could not be impartial based

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6 PIZZUTO V. RAMIREZ

on allegations challenging his conduct during the trial and in

relation to two of Pizzuto’s co-defendants. Judge Reinhardt

denied the motion.

Pizzuto filed his initial federal habeas corpus petition,

which the state answered by arguing that many of Pizzuto’s

claims were not exhausted because they had not been brought

in the initial state post-conviction proceeding. Pizzuto then

returned to state court to exhaust those claims, but the Idaho

courts held that those same claims were procedurally barred

because they could have been brought in the first postconviction proceeding. Pizzuto v. State, 903 P.2d 58 (Idaho

1995). When Pizzuto returned to federal court, the district

court held that Pizzuto had not shown sufficient cause to

excuse the procedural default of his ineffective assistance of

counsel and judicial bias claims. We affirmed those rulings. 

Arave, 280 F.3d at 975–76.

After the United States Supreme Court’s decision in

Martinez v. Ryan, Pizzuto filed a Rule 60 motion, the denial

of which is now before us. Seeking relief from the denial of

his first habeas corpus petition, he argued first that Martinez

established the kind of extraordinarycircumstances needed to

justify reopening the judgment under Rule 60(b)(6), and that

three of the claims rejected by the Idaho Supreme Court as

procedurally barred are eligible for consideration under

Martinez. Pizzuto also argued that he is entitled to relief

under Rules 60(b)(6) and 60(d)(3) because the state’s

attorneys had perpetrated a fraud on the federal district court. 

The claims that Pizzuto attempts to reopen are the thirteenth,

fourteenth, and twentieth grounds for issuance of the writ in

Pizzuto’s initial habeas corpus petition. The thirteenth

ground (“Claim 13”) is that Judge Reinhardt had been biased

at the guilt and sentencing phases of trial, as shown by

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PIZZUTO V. RAMIREZ 7

questioning witnesses inappropriately and making off-therecord comments to Pizzuto’s family that Pizzuto was a

murderer who was going to be “burn[ed].” The fourteenth

ground (“Claim 14”) also relates to judicial bias, claiming

that Judge Reinhardt had contact with the jurors outside the

presence of Pizzuto or his counsel. And the twentieth ground

(“Claim 20”) is that Pizzuto was denied his right to effective

assistance of counsel because Chenoweth, his attorneyat trial,

on appeal, and on his initial state post-conviction review, had

a close relationship with Judge Reinhardt, which created a

conflict of interest. That relationship, which Chenoweth did

not disclose to Pizzuto, included having formerly employed

Judge Reinhardt and having gone on vacation together.

The district court denied Pizzuto’s motion, holding that

Claims 13 and 14 were not ineffective assistance of counsel

claims, and therefore were outside the scope of Martinez. It

held that Claim 20 could be considered under the Martinez

framework but that it was not “substantial” and thus failed. 

Finally, the district court held that Pizzuto had not established

a factual basis for his fraud on the court claim. It granted a

certificate of appealability on all issues, and this appeal

followed.1

1 We previously vacated the district court’s denial of Pizzuto’s

successive petition for a writ of habeas corpus, and remanded for the

district court to consider that petition in light of the Supreme Court’s

decision in Hall v. Florida, 134 S. Ct. 1986 (2014). See Pizzuto v. Blades,

758 F.3d 1178 (9th Cir. 2014) (withdrawing our earlier published opinion

in Pizzuto v. Blades, 729 F.3d 1211 (9th Cir. 2013), which had affirmed

the district court). The disposition of that petition is pending.

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II

We review a district court’s denial of a Rule 60(b) motion

for abuse of discretion. Towery v. Ryan, 673 F.3d 933, 940

(9th Cir. 2012). “A court abuses its discretion when it fails to

identify and apply the correct legal rule to the relief

requested, or if its application of the correct legal standard

was illogical, implausible or without support in inferences

that may be drawn from the facts in the record.” Id. (citing

United States v. Hinkson, 585 F.3d 1247, 1262–63 (9th Cir.

2009) (en banc)).

We may affirm the district court on any basis supported

by the record, whether or not relied on by the district court. 

Hall v. N. Am. Van Lines, Inc., 476 F.3d 683, 686 (9th Cir.

2007).

III

A. Pizzuto’s Claims Are Not Entitled to Relief Under

Martinez

Pizzuto’s first argument is that Martinez v. Ryan gives

cause for the state-law procedural default of three of the

claims that he raised in his initial habeas corpus petition. The

state urges that this argument be rejected as an improper

second or successive habeas corpus petition under the guise

of a Rule 60(b) motion. We conclude that the claims were

properly brought under Rule 60(b), and then consider the

claims within the Martinez framework. On the merits, we

affirm the district court’s rejection of Pizzuto’s argument

because Claims 13 and 14 are not ineffective assistance of

counsel claims—the only substantive area that Martinez

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PIZZUTO V. RAMIREZ 9

covers—and Claim 20 does not satisfy Martinez’s

requirements.

1. Pizzuto’s Rule 60(b) Motion Is Not a Disguised

Second or Successive Habeas Petition

Rule 60(b) permits a party to seek relief from a final

judgment under limited circumstances. Jones v. Ryan,

733 F.3d 825, 833 (9th Cir. 2013), cert. denied, 134 S. Ct.

503 (2013). Rule 60(b)(6), the primary provision under

which Pizzuto seeks relief, requires a showing of

extraordinary circumstances that justify reopening a

judgment. Id.

Jones considered at length when a Rule 60(b) motion

filed by a habeas corpus petitioner should be dismissed as an

improper disguised second or successive habeas petition. 

While there is no bright-line rule for distinguishing the two,

“a legitimate Rule 60(b) motion ‘attacks . . . some defect in

the integrity of the federal habeas proceedings,’ while a

second or successive habeas corpus petition ‘is a filing that

contains one or more claims.’” Id. at 834 (quoting Gonzalez

v. Crosby, 545 U.S. 524, 530, 532 (2005)). Motions that

allege fraud on the federal habeas corpus court, or allege a

prior ruling which prevented a merits determination—such as

a ruling that certain claims were procedurally defaulted—was

in error are properly brought under Rule 60(b). Id.

Applying that legal framework to Pizzuto’s claims here,

we conclude that all three of Pizzuto’s claims are properly

made under Rule 60(b). Pizzuto’s motion argued that Claims

13, 14, and 20 of his initial federal habeas corpus petition had

been improperly held procedurally defaulted. And his other

argument is that the state’s lawyers perpetrated a fraud on the

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10 PIZZUTO V. RAMIREZ

federal district court. These arguments fall within the

permissible scope of Rule 60(b) motions. Gonzalez, 545 U.S.

at 538 (“A motion that . . . challenges only the District

Court’s failure to reach the merits does not warrant [treatment

as a successive habeas corpus petition], and can therefore be

ruled upon by the District Court without precertification by

the Court of Appeals pursuant to § 2244(b)(3).”); cf. Jones,

733 F.3d at 835–37 (rejecting an attempt to use a Rule 60(b)

motion and Martinezto raise ineffective assistance of counsel

claims that had never before been presented to the state or

federal court).

The state argues that, although challenges to prior

procedural defaults are generally within the ambit of Rule

60(b) motions, see Gonzalez, 545 U.S. at 532 n.4, Pizzuto’s

attempt to define his claims as ineffective assistance of

counsel claims with an aim to fit them within the scope of

Martinez v. Ryan transforms them into new claims that

require a second or successive habeas petition, see id. at 531. 

As discussed more fully below, we reject Pizzuto’s effort to

transform Claims 13 and 14 into ineffective assistance of

counsel claims, and thus decline to extend the rule announced

in Martinez to cover them. Were we persuaded by Pizzuto’s

efforts, the state would be correct that Rule 60(b) could not be

used as an end-run around the bar on successive habeas

corpus petitions. As for Claim 20, we conclude that it has

been an ineffective assistance of counsel claim under

Martinez from the beginning, but that it does not satisfy the

test we have articulated for relief under Martinez.

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PIZZUTO V. RAMIREZ 11

2. Martinez Is Limited to Claims of Ineffective

Assistance of Counsel

Pizzuto argues that Claims 13 and 14, relating to judicial

bias, independently support the application of Martinez. We

disagree and hold that such an interpretation of Martinez’s

scope is foreclosed by our precedent.

The Supreme Court has held that state post-conviction

review counsel’s ineffective assistance cannot serve as cause

to excuse the procedural default of claims. Coleman v.

Thompson, 501 U.S. 722, 752–54 (1991). Martinez

established a “narrow exception” to Coleman’s procedural

default principle: “Inadequate assistance of counsel at initialreview collateral proceedings may establish cause for a

prisoner’s procedural default of a claim of ineffective

assistance at trial.” Martinez, 132 S. Ct. at 1315. Trevino v.

Thaler, 133 S. Ct. 1911, 1918–20 (2013), slightly expanded

the application of Martinez to include cases from states where

petitioners are permitted to raise claims of ineffective

assistance on direct appeal, but are practically barred from

doing so by local court rules.

But we have not allowed petitioners to substantially

expand the scope of Martinez beyond the circumstances

present in Martinez or Trevino. In Hunton v. Sinclair,

732 F.3d 1124, 1126–27 (9th Cir. 2013), we denied a

petitioner’s claim that Martinez permitted the resuscitation of

a procedurally defaulted Brady claim, holding that only the

Supreme Court could expand the application of Martinez to

other areas.

The one exception to that rule is Ha Van Nguyen v. Curry,

736 F.3d 1287, 1296 (9th Cir. 2013), where we held that

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12 PIZZUTO V. RAMIREZ

Martinez covered claims of ineffective assistance of appellate

counsel, not just ineffective assistance of counsel at trial. 

However, even in adopting this expansion, we noted that

further substantive expansion would not be forthcoming,

stating: “[t]he Martinez rule is limited to an underlying Sixth

Amendment ineffective-assistance claim.” Id.

We follow Hunton and Nguyen and decline to extend

Martinez to cover claims other than ineffective assistance of

trial or appellate counsel.

3. Claims 13 and 14 Are Not Eligible for Consideration

Under Martinez; Claim 20 Is a Potential Martinez

Claim, But It Does Not Establish Cause and

Prejudice to Excuse Procedural Default

Pizzuto argues that Claim 20, which argued for habeas

relief on the grounds that his trial and appellate attorney, Nick

Chenoweth, had a conflict of interest based on his

relationship with the trial judge, Judge Reinhardt, is an

ineffective assistance of counsel claim under Martinez. He

further argues that Claims 13 and 14, which detail the alleged

biases and errors of Judge Reinhardt, should be considered

evidence of prejudice accountable to Chenoweth’s conflict of

interest. Pizzuto’s argument is that Chenoweth failed to

object to these purported biases at trial in order to maintain

Chenoweth’s relationship with Reinhardt.

Our analysis above confirms that Claims 13 and 14 are

not the type of claims that can be pursued under Martinez.

Permitting claims of trial error to be considered ineffective

assistance of counsel claims because an effective attorney

would have prevented or remedied that purported error would

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PIZZUTO V. RAMIREZ 13

expand Martinez to include all potential errors, and make the

limitations we stated in Hunton and Nguyen nonsensical.

Nor can we fairly construe Claims 13 and 14 as

ineffective assistance of counsel claims. Nowhere in their

text does that allegation occur, and they do not allege any

specific failures by trial or appellate counsel. Moreover,

because there is no hint of an ineffective assistance of counsel

argument in the text of the claims, if we accepted Pizzuto’s

arguments relating to Claims 13 and 14, we would essentially

be treating them as new claims, which Jones v. Ryan made

clear are barred by the rule against successive habeas corpus

petitions. See 733 F.3d at 834–35. We conclude that Claims

13 and 14 are not eligible for consideration under Martinez’s

exception to the procedural default rule, and the district

court’s decision is affirmed as to those claims.

As for Claim 20, assuming without deciding that if the

claim satisfied Martinez’s requirements, it would constitute

an extraordinarycircumstance sufficient to justifyrelief under

Rule 60(b)(6),2 we hold that Pizzuto’s claim does not

establish cause to excuse procedural default under Martinez.

The state argues that because conflict of interest cases are

governed by a different standard than most ineffective

assistance cases, Claim 20 cannot be considered under

Martinez without impermissibly expanding its scope. 

2

Jones v. Ryan gives us some reason to doubt that it does. See 733 F.3d

at 839–40 (applying the factors identified in Phelps v. Alameida, 569 F.3d

1120, 1135–40 (9th Cir. 2009), to determine whether extraordinary

circumstances exist, and holding that the change in the law signified by

Martinezis not an extraordinary circumstance in a death penalty case with

some similarities to Pizzuto’s).

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Specifically, the state notes the differences between the legal

standard governing typical ineffective assistance of counsel

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

and the standard set out by the two leading conflict of interest

cases from the Supreme Court, Cuyler v. Sullivan, 446 U.S.

335 (1980), and Mickens v. Taylor, 535 U.S. 162 (2002). But

Martinez does not refer to “Strickland” claims; it refers to

claims of “ineffective assistance of counsel.” 132 S. Ct. at

1315. We have interpreted that phrase to include all Sixth

Amendment ineffectiveness of counsel claims. See Nguyen,

763 F.3d at 1296. And although they are governed by a

different legal standard, conflict of interest claims go to the

same legal injury as standard ineffective assistance claims. 

In Alberni v. McDaniel, we said that the “Sixth Amendment

right to counsel includes a correlative right to representation

free from conflicts of interest.” 458 F.3d 860, 869 (9th Cir.

2006) (internal quotation marks omitted). We therefore

conclude that conflict of interest claims are eligible for

consideration under Martinez.

But we affirm the district court’s denial of Pizzuto’s

claim. In Mickens, 535 U.S. at 174–75, the Supreme Court

held that potential relationships between counsel and a trial

judge are among the types of conflicts that require a showing

of an actual conflict that adversely impacted counsel’s

performance. This standard means that a petitioner must

show more than “a mere theoretical division of loyalties,” but

must prove “‘that a conflict of interest actually affected the

adequacy of his representation.’” Id. at 171 (quoting Cuyler,

446 U.S. at 349).

We have also described the analysis that applies once a

claim has been determined to be eligible for consideration

under Martinez. See Clabourne v. Ryan, 745 F.3d 362,

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PIZZUTO V. RAMIREZ 15

376–78 (9th Cir. 2014) (summarizing the holdings of the

fragmented opinions in Detrich v. Ryan, 740 F.3d 1237 (9th

Cir. 2013) (en banc)). Clabourne explained:

To demonstrate cause and prejudice sufficient

to excuse the procedural default, therefore,

Martinez and Detrich require that Clabourne

make two showings. First, to establish

“cause,” he must establish that his counsel in

the state postconviction proceeding was

ineffective under the standards of Strickland. 

Strickland, in turn, requires him to establish

that both (a) post-conviction counsel’s

performance was deficient, and (b) there was

a reasonable probability that, absent the

deficient performance, the result of the postconviction proceedings would have been

different. See Strickland, 466 U.S. at 687,

694, 104 S. Ct. 2052. Second, to establish

“prejudice,” he must establish that his

“underlying ineffective-assistance-of-trialcounsel claim is a substantial one, which is to

say that the prisoner must demonstrate that the

claim has some merit.” Martinez, 132 S. Ct.

at 1318.

Id. at 377.

The district court in this case did not have the benefit of

Detrich or Clabourne when it decided Pizzuto’s Rule 60(b)

motion. But we need not vacate and remand because it is

clear from the record that Pizzuto is not entitled to relief. Cf.

Clabourne, 745 F.3d at 376. Pizzuto has not satisfied the

“cause” prong of the analysis, which relates to the ineffective

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16 PIZZUTO V. RAMIREZ

assistance of his initial post-conviction review counsel, Nick

Chenoweth. Indeed, analyzing Pizzuto’s procedural default

under the pre-Martinez standard of cause and prejudice, we

held that his conflict of interest claim lacked merit:

Pizzuto does not show how [Chenoweth’s

personal relationship with Judge Reinhardt]

amounts to an actual conflict of interest such

that counsel would not have challenged Judge

Reinhardt’s behavior. See Cuyler v. Sullivan,

446 U.S. 335, 345–50 (1980); see also

Barnhill v. Flannigan, 42 F.3d 1074, 1077–78

(7th Cir. 1994) (noting the general rule that an

attorney’s actual conflict can be sufficient

cause to excuse a procedural default, but

holding no actual conflict shown by allegation

that public defender on appeal refrained from

raising ineffectiveness of trial counsel who

was also a public defender). In fact,

[Chenoweth] moved for a new trial and to

disqualify Judge Reinhardt from participating

in further proceedings based on a charge of

judicial misconduct, and challenged Judge

Reinhardt’s lack of partiality during the

sentencing phase in Pizzuto’s amended first

petition for post-conviction relief. If

[Chenoweth] had truly been conflicted, [he]

would not have taken either step. As we

cannot presume that a conflict exists where

none is demonstrated, see Cuyler, 446 U.S. at

347–48, Pizzuto has failed to establish cause.

Arave, 280 F.3d at 975–76. Even if Martinez’s “some merit”

standard is a lower bar than the standard we applied earlier,

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PIZZUTO V. RAMIREZ 17

Pizzuto must show ineffective assistance at the postconviction review stage. The alleged conflict constituting

ineffective assistance of initial post-conviction review

counsel—Chenoweth’s personal relationship with Judge

Reinhardt—is identical to the conflict underlying his

ineffective assistance of trial counsel claim. Our skepticism

in Arave that Pizzuto had demonstrated an actual conflict at

the trial level was rooted in large part in the fact that

Chenoweth sought to disqualify Judge Reinhardt for bias at

the post-conviction review stage. See Arave, 280 F.3d at 976.

It does not matter whether we apply the Strickland

standard to this inquiry, as Clabourne holds, or, in light of our

conclusion that conflict of interest claims are eligible for

review under Martinez, we use the Cuyler standard. The

result is the same. Under the standard in Strickland, Pizzuto

has offered nothing beyond speculation that actual conflict

rendered Chenoweth’s performance at post-conviction review

deficient or that he was prejudiced at the post-conviction

review stage by this deficiency, and the record of those

proceedings indicates that his counsel’s performance was not

deficient. Similarly, applying the standard in Cuyler, where

no separate showing of prejudice is needed but where “a

conflict of interest [must] actually [have] affected the

adequacy of [counsel’s] representation,” Cuyler, 446 U.S. at

349, Pizzuto has not shown that Chenoweth’s relationship

with Judge Reinhardt affected the adequacy of his

representation at the post-conviction stage any more than he

had demonstrated a conflict at the trial stage. We hold that

Pizzuto has not established cause sufficient to excuse

procedural default under Martinez.

Because Pizzuto’s claim that his counsel had a conflict of

interest based on counsel’s relationship with the trial judge is

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18 PIZZUTO V. RAMIREZ

unsupported by the record, we affirm the district court’s

denial of Pizzuto’s motion under Rule 60(b).

B. Pizzuto Has Not Shown that the Government Perpetrated

a Fraud on the District Court

Pizzuto’s second claim is that the denial of his habeas

corpus petition should be set aside because the Idaho

Attorney General’s office has perpetrated a fraud on the

district court. We disagree.

Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60(d)(3) permits courts

to set aside judgments for fraud on the court, and we have

held that Rule 60(b)(6)’s “extraordinary circumstances”

doctrine encompasses the same acts. Latshaw v. Trainer

Wortham & Co., Inc., 452 F.3d 1097, 1104 (9th Cir. 2006). 

We have held that a party bears a high burden in seeking to

prove fraud on the court, which must “involve an

‘unconscionable plan or scheme which is designed to

improperly influence the court in its decision.’” Abatti v.

Comm’r, 859 F.2d 115, 118 (9th Cir. 1988) (quoting Toscano

v. Comm’r, 441 F.2d 930, 934 (9th Cir. 1971)).

As an equitable rule, there is no specific set of facts that

a petitioner must show. But in United States v. Estate of

Stonehill, 660 F.3d 415, 443–44 (9th Cir. 2011), we held that

fraud on the court must be established by clear and

convincing evidence, id. at 443, and outlined some of the

relevant considerations for distinguishing “fraud on the court”

from other forms of fraud, id. at 444. Specifically, we do not

inquire about prejudice to the party seeking to prove fraud,

but rather consider whether the integrity of the judicial

process was itself harmed, such that the court cannot perform

its regular task of fairly adjudicating disputes. Id. Examples

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PIZZUTO V. RAMIREZ 19

typically involve “a scheme by one party to hide a key fact

from the court and the opposing party.” Id.

Pizzuto’s claim of fraud on the court rests on two sets of

factual claims. The first set is a series of allegations of

improprieties during his trial. The allegations include: (1) a

secret plea agreement for Pizzuto’s co-defendant James Rice,

allegedly orchestrated by Pizzuto’s trial judge, Judge

Reinhardt; (2) allegedlyperjured testimonyfrom Rice elicited

by the prosecutors and allowed by Judge Reinhardt denying

the existence of such a plea; and (3) Judge Reinhardt’s

alleged participation in the collection or fabrication of

evidence against Pizzuto. The second set of claims, which is

necessary to transform these wrongdoings into a fraud on the

federal habeas corpus court rather than the state trial court,

includes the contention that the Idaho Attorney General’s

office knew of and concealed these facts while defending

Pizzuto’s habeas corpus petition before the federal district

court, the denial of which underlies the Rule 60 motion

before us.

Even if we assume that the first set of allegations are

accurate and substantial, we affirm the district court’s denial

of Pizzuto’s motion because Pizzuto has not shown how the

actions of the state in defending against Pizzuto’s federal

habeas appeals constitute a fraud on the court. Indeed, that

contention has so little basis in the record as to be wholly

unpersuasive.

The burden of proof rests with petitioner to show the

fraud by clear and convincing evidence, and it must consist

of more than garden-variety nondisclosure. Stonehill,

660 F.3d at 443, 445. Pizzuto has no specific evidence of any

knowledge on the part of the lawyers representing the state

 Case: 13-35443, 04/22/2015, ID: 9504111, DktEntry: 49-1, Page 19 of 20
20 PIZZUTO V. RAMIREZ

before the federal courts of the various alleged trial

improprieties that Pizzuto says took place, and he relies

instead on a series of allegations and implications. It takes

more than “say so” to transform routine advocacy by the

state’s lawyers of its position into a fraud on the court.

Even if the allegations of improper behavior at the trial

level were assumed to be truthful, Pizzuto has not offered

evidence that the state’s failure to disclose those events

constitutes the kind of “unconscionable plan or scheme which

is designed to improperly influence the court in its decision.” 

Toscano, 441 F.2d at 934.

Pizzuto argues that the state’s failure to investigate and

turn over potentially exculpatory information during the

federal habeas corpus proceedings is the kind of fundamental

error that undermines the entirety of the proceeding. But the

Supreme Court has held that the state’s constitutional

obligation to disclose exculpatory evidence to criminal

defendants does not apply on collateral review. Dist. Att’y’s

Office for the Third Judicial Dist. v. Osborne, 557 U.S. 52, 68

(2009).

Pizzuto has not shown by clear and convincing evidence

that a fraud was perpetrated on the federal district court. We

agree with the district court’s denial of Pizzuto’s motion

under Rules 60(b) and 60(d) for relief based on fraud on the

court.

AFFIRMED.

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