Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca9-12-55667/USCOURTS-ca9-12-55667-2/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Sophia Daire
Appellant
Mary Lattimore
Appellee

Document Text:

FOR PUBLICATION

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

SOPHIA DAIRE,

Petitioner-Appellant,

v.

MARY LATTIMORE, Warden,

Respondent-Appellee.

No. 12-55667

D.C. No.

2:10-cv-03743-

DMG-AJW

OPINION

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Central District of California

Dolly M. Gee, District Judge, Presiding

Submitted En Banc

January 12, 2016*—Pasadena, California

Filed February 9, 2016

Before: Sidney R. Thomas, Chief Judge, Stephen

Reinhardt, M. Margaret McKeown, Richard C. Tallman,

Johnnie B. Rawlinson, Jay S. Bybee, Consuelo M.

Callahan, Carlos T. Bea, N. Randy Smith, Mary H.

Murguia and Paul J. Watford, Circuit Judges.

Per Curiam Opinion

* The en banc court unanimously concludes this case is suitable for

decision without oral argument. See Fed. R. App. P. 34(a)(2).

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2 DAIRE V. LATTIMORE

SUMMARY**

Habeas Corpus

The en banc court held that given the holdings in Glover

v. United States, 531 U.S. 198 (2001), and Lafler v. Cooper,

132 S. Ct. 1376 (2012), the Supreme Court has clearly

established that Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668

(1984), governs claims for ineffective assistance of counsel

in noncapital sentencing proceedings.

The en banc court overruled this court’s decisions that are

to the contrary, declined to reach any other issue presented by

the parties, and returned control of the case to the three-judge

panel.

COUNSEL

Sara J. O’Connell, Covington & Burling LLP, San Diego,

California, for Petitioner-Appellant.

Kamala D. Harris, Attorney General of California; Dane R.

Gillette, Chief Assistant AttorneyGeneral; Lance E. Winters,

Senior Assistant Attorney General; Kenneth C. Byrne,

Supervising Deputy Attorney General; Xiomara Costello,

Deputy Attorney General, Los Angeles, California, for

Respondent-Appellee.

** 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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DAIRE V. LATTIMORE 3

OPINION

PER CURIAM:

We voted to rehear this case en banc to reconsider our

circuit precedent holding that there was no “clearly

established” federal law on the question of whether Strickland

v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668, 694 (1984), governs claims for

ineffective assistance of counsel in noncapital sentencing

proceedings. See Cooper-Smith v. Palmateer, 397 F.3d 1236,

1244 (9th Cir. 2005) and Davis v. Grigas, 443 F.3d 1155,

1158 (9th Cir. 2006).

In this case, a California jury convicted Daire of firstdegree burglary. Daire claimed that, during sentencing, her

attorney provided ineffective assistance of counsel under the

standard articulated in Strickland, 466 U.S. at 687. On

federal habeas review, applying our binding circuit precedent,

the district court held that the application of the Strickland

standard to noncapital sentencing proceedings was not

“clearly established Federal law” for purposes of 28 U.S.C.

§ 2254(d)(1).

In Glover v. United States, 531 U.S. 198, 202–04 (2001),

the United States Supreme Court applied Strickland to a

noncapital sentencing proceeding. Glover presented the

question whether “a showing of prejudice, in the context of

a claim for ineffective assistance of counsel, requires a

significant increase in a term of imprisonment.” Id. at 204. 

The claim in Glover arose from noncapital sentencing

proceedings governed by federal guidelines. Id. at 200. The

Supreme Court reversed the Seventh Circuit for

“supplant[ing] the Strickland analysis” in such a context. Id.

at 203. In closing, Glover noted that “the ultimate merits of

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4 DAIRE V. LATTIMORE

[petitioner’s] claim” would turn on Strickland’s elements:

“the question of deficient performance” and “prejudice

flow[ing] from the asserted error in sentencing.” Id. at 204.

To the extent that there was any doubt that Glover

“clearly established” that Strickland applied to noncapital

sentencing proceedings, that doubt was erased in Lafler v.

Cooper, 132 S. Ct. 1376 (2012). In Lafler, the Supreme

Court stated that Glover:

establish[ed] that there exists a right to

counsel during sentencing in . . . noncapital

. . . cases. Even though sentencing does not

concern the defendant’s guilt or innocence,

ineffective assistance of counsel during a

sentencing hearing can result in Strickland

prejudice because “anyamount of [additional]

jail time has Sixth Amendment significance.”

Lafler, 132 S. Ct. at 1385–86 (second alteration in original)

(citations omitted) (quoting Glover, 531 U.S. at 203).

Given Glover and Lafler, the Supreme Court has clearly

established that Strickland governs claims for ineffective

assistance of counsel in noncapital sentencing proceedings.1

1

Indeed, we implicitly recognized as much in a pair of decisions issued

after the Supreme Court decided Glover in 2001 but before the California

Supreme Court rejected Daire’s ineffective assistance claim on the merits

in 2011. See Tilcock v. Budge, 538 F.3d 1138, 1146 (9th Cir. 2008)

(applying Strickland to a noncapital sentencing ineffective assistance

claim and granting petitioner an evidentiary hearing); see also Gonzalez

v. Knowles, 515 F.3d 1006, 1015 (9th Cir. 2008) (applying Strickland to

a noncapital sentencing ineffective assistance claim where petitioner

argued that his attorney failed to investigate potentially mitigating

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DAIRE V. LATTIMORE 5

See also Premo v. Moore, 562 U.S. 115, 126 (2011)

(“Whether before, during, or after trial, when the Sixth

Amendment applies, the formulation of the standard [for

deficient performance, as an element of ineffective assistance

of counsel] is the same: reasonable competence in

representing the accused.”) (quoting Strickland, 466 U.S. at

688). Therefore, we overrule our contrary decisions on which

the district court relied—namely, Cooper-Smith, Davis, and

all of our other decisions that are similarly to the contrary.

We voted to rehear this case en banc in order to

reconsider our circuit precedent. We decline as an en banc

court to reach any other issue presented by the parties. While

the three-judge panel that heard the appeal was bound by

Cooper-Smith and Davis and issued its opinion based on that

assumption, it nonetheless applied Strickland in the

alternative. In issuing our order granting rehearing en banc,

we instructed that the three-judge panel opinion should not be

cited as precedent by or to any court of the Ninth Circuit. 

Daire v. Lattimore, 803 F.3d 381 (9th Cir. 2015). With this

correction in the law, we return control of the case to the

three-judge panel. The panel, at its election, may reinstate its

prior opinion or issue an amended opinion. The three-judge

panel will also resolve the petition for panel rehearing on the

merits. En banc proceedings with respect to this case are

terminated.

REMANDED.

evidence of mental illness and did not call his family members to testify

on his behalf).

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