Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca9-13-56385/USCOURTS-ca9-13-56385-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
L. S. McEwen
Appellee
Paul Andy Turner
Appellant

Document Text:

FOR PUBLICATION

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

PAUL ANDY TURNER,

Petitioner-Appellant,

v.

L. S. MCEWEN, Warden,

Respondent-Appellee.

No. 13-56385

D.C. No.

5:11-cv-02069-VAP-JCG

OPINION

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Central District of California

Virginia A. Phillips, District Judge, Presiding

Argued and Submitted

March 11, 2016—Pasadena, California

Filed April 14, 2016

Before: Richard R. Clifton, Consuelo M. Callahan,

and Sandra S. Ikuta, Circuit Judges.

Opinion by Judge Clifton

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2 TURNER V. MCEWEN

SUMMARY*

Habeas Corpus

The panel affirmed the district court’s denial of California

state prisoner Paul Andy Turner’s habeas corpus petition

challenging his conviction for attempted carjacking, in a case

in which Turner claimed that jurors’ observation of a

spectator directing the victim’s testimony at trial constituted

consideration of extrinsic evidence or extraneous information,

or otherwise violated his Sixth Amendment right to a fair

trial. 

The panel held that the California Court of Appeal, which

decided that juror misconduct did not occur in this case, could

not have unreasonablyapplied clearlyestablished federal law,

given the lack of holdings from the Supreme Court regarding

the potentially prejudicial effect of spectators’ courtroom

conduct of the kind involved here. The panel wrote that the

general principles that a jury decides a case based on the

evidence produced at trial, and that the rights of confrontation

and cross-examination are fundamental to a fair trial, are not

sufficient to support a conclusion that the California Court of

Appeal unreasonably applied clearly established Supreme

Court precedent.

* 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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TURNER V. MCEWEN 3

COUNSEL

Hilary Potashner, Federal Public Defender, and Kathryn Ann

Young (argued), Deputy Federal Public Defender, Los

Angeles, California, for Petitioner-Appellant.

Kamala D. Harris, Attorney General of California, Julie L.

Garland, Senior Assistant Attorney General, and David

Delgado-Rucci and Neru Joy Utomi (argued), Deputy

Attorneys General, San Diego, California, for RespondentAppellee.

OPINION

CLIFTON, Circuit Judge:

Petitioner Paul Andy Turner was convicted of attempted

carjacking following a jury trial in a California state court. 

The victim identified him in a photographic lineup shortly

after the crime. At trial, however, the victim professed not to

be able to identify Turner and testified that he was drunk and

angry at the time of the initial identification. While he

testified, a woman sat as a spectator shaking her head. Some

of the jurors observed that action, and later said that they

believed that the woman was the victim’s mother and that she

was directing him not to identify Turner. Neither the trial

judge nor the attorneys noticed the woman’s actions at the

time. After the jury returned a guilty verdict, the trial court

denied Turner’s motion for a new trial, and the conviction

was affirmed on appeal. Turner sought habeas relief in

federal court, contending, among other arguments, that his

conviction was tainted because the jurors’ verdict was

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4 TURNER V. MCEWEN

influenced by something other than evidence admitted during

the trial. This district court dismissed Turner’s petition.

The central issue before us is whether the decision of the

California Court of Appeal rejecting Turner’s claim is

contrary to, or involves an unreasonable application of,

clearly established federal law as determined by the Supreme

Court. We conclude that there is no clearly established

Supreme Court precedent that speaks to Turner’s claim and

therefore affirm the district court’s denial of Turner’s habeas

petition.

I. Background

On September 11, 2006, after a night with friends at a

dance club in San Bernardino, Tillford Smith stopped to eat

at a Denny’s Restaurant in Colton, California. As he left the

restaurant, he was approached by a man with a gun. Smith

punched the man, and the man shot him in the shin and thigh.

Smith was taken to an emergency room, where Police

Corporal Henry Dominguez showed him a photographic

lineup. Smith identified Turner as his assailant. Smith told

Corporal Dominguez that Turner had approached him with a

gun, asked him for his car keys, and shot him following a

tussle. Smith also identified a man that he had seen with

Turner in the restaurant prior to the incident. According to

Corporal Dominguez, Smith seemed angry and smelled of

alcohol during their conversation, but was cooperative and

coherent.

Turner was ultimately arrested for the crime. He was

tried in April 2008 on two charges: attempted carjacking (Cal.

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TURNER V. MCEWEN 5

Penal Code §§ 664, 215(a)) and second degree robbery (Cal.

Penal Code § 211).

At trial, Smith testified that he could not recognize the

man who shot him because two years had passed and he had

been drunk at the time of the incident. When presented with

the photographic lineup he had seen the day of the shooting,

Smith denied that his assailant was pictured. Smith also

testified that he did not remember telling Corporal

Dominguez about seeing another person with his assailant

and did not remember identifying this person in a lineup. 

Smith indicated that he did not really remember Corporal

Dominguez, either. He testified that his state of mind was not

“very good” at the time of his conversation with Corporal

Dominguez, explaining that he was drunk, angry, and his

adrenaline was pumping.

Turner was convicted of attempted carjacking, with a

finding that he personally discharged a firearm, causing great

bodily injury (Cal. Penal Code § 12022.53(d)).1 The jury was

unable to reach a verdict on the second degree robbery

charge, and that count was dismissed.

Following the verdict, counsel for both sides spoke with

some of the jurors about the case. When asked about their

impression of Smith’s testimony, some of them stated that

1 Evidence in addition to Smith’s photographic lineup identification was

presented against Turner at trial. Turner does not challenge his conviction

on the ground that the evidence was insufficient to support a verdict, see

Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307, 318–19 (1979), but he does argue that

the other evidence was not strong enough to support a verdict independent

of Smith’s identification, disputing that any error might have been

harmless. In light of our resolution of his primary claim, it is not necessary

for us to evaluate the strength of the other evidence.

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6 TURNER V. MCEWEN

they saw a woman in the audience they believed to be

Smith’s mother shaking her head while Smith was being

asked to identify Turner in a photo lineup. The jurors

interpreted this as Smith’s mother directing him not to

identify Turner. The jurors indicated that this incident

affected their assessment of Smith’s credibility.

In response, Turner requested that the trial court release

information about the jurors so that a defense investigator

could contact them. The trial court denied the request,

concluding that a prima facie case for release of the

information had not been established. The trial court noted

that the parties were willing to stipulate as to what the jurors

conveyed to counsel following the trial, such that “any further

information from jurors would either only corroborate that

and would be unnecessary, or would lead to what may have

happened during jury deliberations,” which would be

inadmissible.

The parties did in fact stipulate as to information received

from the jurors. The stipulation stated:

1) After the jury returned a verdict in the

above-referenced case, the Deputy District

Attorney assigned to this case and counsel for

defendant spoke to some of the jurors

regarding the case;

2) When asked about their impression of the

testimony of Joel Tillford Smith, the

complaining witness in count 2, several of the

jurors remarked that they saw a person who

they believed was Mr. Smith’s mother

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TURNER V. MCEWEN 7

shaking her head as if she were directing Mr.

Smiths’s [sic] testimony;

3) The jurors said that this happened when

Mr. Smith was being asked to pick the

defendant out of a photo lineup shown to him

by the prosecutor during the trial;

4) The jurors said that they believed that she

was directing the witness to not identify the

defendant.

Turner filed a motion for a new trial. He argued that he

was entitled to a new trial based on the jury’s receipt of

evidence out of court and juror misconduct. The trial court

denied Turner’s motion, explaining that the alleged conduct

occurred in open court while a witness was testifying. The

jurors’ observations that a spectator may have been directing

a witness’s testimony were, according to the trial court,

“appropriate in assessing the overall credibility and

believability of the witness.” The trial court also noted that

the jurors had no obligation to report their observations given

that they were made in open court while testimony was

underway.

Following the denial of his motion for a new trial, Turner

was sentenced to four years and six months for the attempted

carjacking, plus 25 years to life for the section 12022.53(d)

weapons-use enhancement.

Turner appealed. His arguments included contentionsthat

his constitutional rights were violated by: (1) juror

misconduct; (2) the trial court’s failure to conduct an

evidentiary hearing on his motion for a new trial; (3) the trial

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8 TURNER V. MCEWEN

court’s denial of his motion to release juror information; and

(4) spectator misconduct. The California Court of Appeal

affirmed.

With respect to Turner’s juror misconduct argument, the

Court of Appeal noted:

While it is clearly misconduct for a juror to

bring independently obtained evidence that

was not presented at trial into deliberations,

we are unaware of any case that holds it is

misconduct for a juror to pay attention in the

courtroom or to discuss during deliberations

the juror’s observations in the courtroom.

The court viewed the alleged misconduct as “no different

than a juror expressing to other jurors that a witness looked

like he was lying.” The conduct observed “occurred in open

court and [was] subject to contradiction or qualification by

the other jurors.” The court also stated that:

The jurors could not be expected to recognize

that these actions should be ignored when the

trial court and parties (who did not see the

woman’s actions) said nothing about her

behavior. Having been instructed that they

could consider anything in determining the

witness’s credibility, including the witness’s

demeanor while testifying, they certainly did

not commit misconduct by considering the

woman’s actions and its impact on Smith’s

testimony. We might hold differently if the

trial court were to have admonished the jurors

to ignore the woman’s gestures and they

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TURNER V. MCEWEN 9

disregarded the admonition, but in this case,

the jurors did not commit misconduct by

following the trial court’s given instructions.

With respect to whether the jurors’ observations

prejudiced Turner, the California Court of Appeal concluded

that there had been no showing of inherent bias or a

substantial likelihood of juror bias. The court stated that:

The information the jurors received was

something that the jurors already knew or

should have known: Smith clearly had

changed his story by the time of trial. The

jurors were well aware that something, or

someone, could have been influencing Smith

to change his identification of defendant at

trial. The prosecutor suggested in closing

argument that it was because Smith was

afraid. The fact that the jurors may have also

believed that Smith was told by his family not

to identify defendant presented a different

explanation for Smith’s recanting at trial.

However, this did not impart any new

information pertinent to defendant’s

conviction and did not show bias on behalf of

the jurors.

The court also stated that Corporal Dominguez had testified

credibly and that there was other evidence to support the

jury’s verdict in the record.

Turner filed a petition for review with the California

Supreme Court. The petition for review was denied without

comment.

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10 TURNER V. MCEWEN

Turner then filed a habeas corpus petition under 28 U.S.C.

§ 2254 in federal district court. The magistrate judge

recommended denial of the petition and dismissal of the

action with prejudice. With respect to Turner’s juror

misconduct claim, the magistrate judge concluded, as had the

California Court of Appeal, that there was no substantial

likelihood of juror bias because the jury’s observation of the

spectator did not provide it with any new information relevant

to the conviction. The magistrate judge also noted that the

California Court of Appeal reasonably found that evidence

unrelated to Smith’s testimony supported the jury’s verdict.

The district judge approved and accepted the magistrate

judge’s Report and Recommendation. The district court

entered judgment denying Turner’s petition and dismissing

his action with prejudice. The district court declined to issue

a certificate of appealability. Turner filed a notice of appeal.

This court granted Turner’s request for a certificate of

appealability on the claim that the jurors’ observation of a

spectator directing a witness’s testimony constituted

consideration of “extrinsic evidence” or “extraneous

information,” or otherwise violated Turner’s Sixth

Amendment right to a fair trial.

II. Discussion

We review a district court’s denial of a habeas petition

under 28 U.S.C. § 2254 de novo. Stanley v. Cullen, 633 F.3d

852, 859 (9th Cir. 2011).

The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of

1996 (“AEDPA”) establishes a “highly deferential standard

for evaluating state-court rulings.” Woodford v. Visciotti,

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TURNER V. MCEWEN 11

537 U.S. 19, 24 (2002) (quoting Lindh v. Murphy, 521 U.S.

320, 333 n. 7 (1997)). Under AEDPA, habeas relief may be

awarded only if the last reasoned state court decision on the

merits:

(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); see Robinson v. Ignacio, 360 F.3d 1044,

1055 (9th Cir. 2004).

The phrase “clearlyestablished Federal law” refers to “the

holdings, as opposed to the dicta” of Supreme Court decisions

“as of the time of the relevant state-court decision.” Williams

v. Taylor, 529 U.S. 362, 412 (2000). If Supreme Court

precedent does not provide a “clear answer to the question

presented,” the state court’s decision cannot be contrary to, or

have unreasonably applied, clearly established federal law. 

Wright v. Van Patten, 552 U.S. 120, 126 (2008) (per curiam).

We conclude that to be the situation here. There is no

clearly established federal law sufficiently related to the facts

of Turner’s case upon which he can rely to support his claim.

Carey v. Musladin, 549 U.S. 70 (2006), makes that clear. 

Musladin was charged and convicted of first degree murder. 

He claimed that he was denied a fair trial because members

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12 TURNER V. MCEWEN

of the victim’s family wore buttons displaying the victim’s

picture on them while sitting in the spectator gallery during

the trial. Id. at 72. The Supreme Court rejected our court’s

conclusion that the state court’s decision denying Musladin’s

claim was contrary to, and an unreasonable application of,

clearly established federal law. Id. at 74, 77. This court had

held that Williams v. Taylor, 529 U.S. 362 (2000), and

Holbrook v. Flynn, 475 U.S. 560 (1986), constituted clearly

established law regarding inherent prejudice that the state

court failed to apply to Musladin’s case. The Supreme Court

disagreed with our court’s assessment, concluding that

Williams, which addressed a requirement that a defendant

appear at trial in prison clothing, and Flynn, which concerned

uniformed state troopers sitting in the courtroom during trial,

involved circumstances unlike those presented in Musladin’s

case because those cases “dealt with government-sponsored

practices.” Musladin, 549 U.S. at 75. The spectators whose

conduct was the subject of Musladin’s complaint were private

citizens. That was different, according to the Court:

In contrast to state-sponsored courtroom

practices, the effect on a defendant’s fair-trial

rights of the spectator conduct to which

Musladin objects is an open question in our

jurisprudence. This Court has never

addressed a claim that such private-actor

courtroom conduct was so inherently

prejudicial that it deprived a defendant of a

fair trial. And although the Court articulated

the test for inherent prejudice that applies to

state conduct in Williams and Flynn, we have

never applied that test to spectators’ conduct.

Id. at 76 (footnote omitted).

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TURNER V. MCEWEN 13

Turner’s claim is essentially the same. The spectator

about whom he complains, Smith’s mother, was a private

actor like the button-wearing spectators in Musladin’s trial. 

Turner expresses his claim in terms of the impact on the jury

rather than the conduct of the spectators, but that is the same

claim repackaged in different wrapping paper. Spectator

conduct is relevant to a defendant’s right to a fair trial

because of its potential effect on the jury. Turner’s claim that

his jury was improperly influenced by the actions of Smith’s

mother is at its core identical to Musladin’s claim that his jury

was improperly influenced by the buttons worn by the

relatives of his victim. Musladin establishes that the Supreme

Court has not clearly spoken on such claims.

Turner attempts to distinguish Musladin by arguing that

it was limited to considering whether “private-actor

courtroom conduct was so inherently prejudicial that it

deprived a defendant of a fair trial.” Id. Turner argues that

his case involved not just inherent prejudice but actual

prejudice. It is not clear that Musladin was so limited, as it

spoke not just of inherent prejudice but also of the

“potentially prejudicial effect” of spectator conduct. Id. at

77.

More importantly, Turner cannot identify a Supreme

Court decision that established law in contradiction to the

California Court of Appeal’s conclusion that the jurors’

consideration of the spectator’s actions was not misconduct

in the first place. The California court accepted the

proposition that “[a] juror who consciously receives outside

information regarding the case . . . commits misconduct.” 

But it did not view the spectator’s actions as something that

was “outside,” as it took place in the courtroom and was

something the jurors could properly observe. As the

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14 TURNER V. MCEWEN

California court stated, it was “unaware of any case that holds

it is misconduct for a juror to pay attention in the courtroom.” 

Turner has failed to identify a Supreme Court decision to the

contrary.

Instead, Turner points to other Supreme Court cases that

he argues establish the more general principle that a jury may

rely only on evidence presented at trial in reaching its verdict. 

In Turner v. Louisiana, 379 U.S. 466 (1965), for instance, the

Court stated that:

In the constitutional sense, trial by jury in a

criminal case necessarily implies at the very

least that the ‘evidence developed’ against a

defendant shall come from the witness stand

in a public courtroom where there is full

judicial protection of the defendant’s right of

confrontation, of cross-examination, and of

counsel.

Id. at 472–73. In the Court’s view, “[t]he requirement that a

jury’s verdict ‘must be based upon the evidence developed at

the trial’ goes to the fundamental integrity of all that is

embraced in the constitutional concept of trial by jury.” Id.

at 472 (quoting Irvin v. Dowd, 366 U.S. 717, 722 (1961)). 

Turner contends that the California Court of Appeal, in

rejecting his juror misconduct claim, unreasonably applied

that clearly established principle.

Turner v. Louisiana involved contacts with jurors outside

the courtroom, however. The problem in that case was that

a sequestered jury was placed in the custody of deputy

sheriffs who maintained a “close and continual association

with the jurors.” Id. at 468. Those deputies included two

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TURNER V. MCEWEN 15

who were key witnesses at trial. The Court recognized “the

potentialities of what went on outside the courtroom during

the three days of the trial.” Id. at 473.

The claim presented to us in the current case is different

from that. There is no claim of contact or influence with the

jury outside the courtroom. The objection is focused entirely

on the in-courtroom conduct of the woman believed to be

Smith’s mother, shaking her head while Smith testified. The

California court expressly drew a distinction between what

happened inside the courtroom and precedents regardingwhat

happened outside. If “state-sponsored” actions within a

courtroom such as those at issue in Williams and Flynn were

too dissimilar to establish law applicable to conduct by

private actors in the courtroom, as the Court held in

Musladin, then cases regarding actions outside the courtroom,

such as Turner v. Louisiana, cannot suffice to constitute

clearly established law applicable to this situation, either.

The Supreme Court has repeatedly warned against

applying its precedents at too high a level of generality in

determining whether a state court’s decision unreasonably

applied clearly established federal law. See, e.g., Nevada v.

Jackson, 133 S. Ct. 1990, 1994 (2013) (“By framing our

precedents at such a high level of generality, a lower federal

court could transform even the most imaginative extension of

existing case law into ‘clearly established Federal law, as

determined by the Supreme Court.’” (quoting 28 U.S.C.

§ 2254(d)(1))). Turner’s argument is premised on the kind of

generality we are to avoid. The Supreme Court precedents he

cites do not “squarely address[] the issue in this case” or give

a “clear answer to the question presented.” Van Patten,

552 U.S. at 125, 126.

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16 TURNER V. MCEWEN

III. Conclusion

The California Court of Appeal’s decision in Turner’s

case could not have unreasonably applied clearly established

federal law “[g]iven the lack of holdings from [the Supreme]

Court regarding the potentially prejudicial effect of

spectators’ courtroom conduct of the kind involved here.” 

Musladin, 549 U.S. at 77. The general principles that a jury

decides a case based on the evidence produced at trial, and

that the rights of confrontation and cross-examination are

fundamental to a fair trial, are not sufficient to support a

conclusion that the California Court of Appeal unreasonably

applied clearly established Supreme Court precedent in

concluding that juror misconduct did not occur in this case. 

For that reason, we must affirm the district court’s denial of

habeas relief.2

AFFIRMED.

2 Turner has briefed other issues as to which he has not been given a

certificate of appealability. This court construes that briefing as a request

to expand the scope of the certificate of appealability. Delgadillo v.

Woodford, 527 F.3d 919, 930 (9th Cir. 2008); Ninth Circuit Rule 22-1(e). 

To expand the certificate of appealability, a petitioner must make a

“substantial showing of the denial of a constitutional right,” 28 U.S.C.

§ 2253(c)(2), accomplished by “demonstrating that jurists of reason could

disagree with the district court’s resolution of his constitutional claims or

that jurists could conclude the issues presented are adequate to deserve

encouragement to proceed further,” Miller-El v. Cockrell, 537 U.S. 322,

327 (2003). Turner has failed to make that showing with respect to the

uncertified issues he raises and we accordingly decline to expand the

certificate of appealability.

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