NOT FOR PUBLICATION

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

ALEXANDER DIAZ, 

Petitioner-Appellant, 

 v. 

JOE A. LIZARRAGA, Warden, 

Respondent-Appellee.

No. 16-17064 

D.C. No. 3:15-cv-00979-JST 

MEMORANDUM*

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Northern District of California

Jon S. Tigar, District Judge, Presiding

Submitted January 17, 2019**

San Francisco, California

Before: WALLACE and FRIEDLAND, Circuit Judges, and ADELMAN,***

District Judge.

Alexander Diaz was convicted of attempted murder in California after the 

prosecution introduced statements he made during an interrogation. Diaz petitioned 

 

* This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent 

except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3.

** The panel unanimously concludes this case is suitable for decision 

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

*** The Honorable Lynn S. Adelman, United States District Judge for the 

Eastern District of Wisconsin, sitting by designation.

FILED

JAN 22 2019

MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK

U.S. COURT OF APPEALS
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for a writ of habeas corpus, which the district court denied, arguing that the 

admission of his statements violated his rights under Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 

436 (1966). We granted a certificate of appealability and have jurisdiction under 28 

U.S.C. § 2253. We affirm.

The California Court of Appeal gave as an independent reason for its 

decision that any error was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. People v. Diaz, 

No. A136143, 2014 WL 3339498, at * 11-12 (Cal. Ct. App. July 9, 2014). Under 

AEDPA, this means that “a federal court may not award habeas relief under 

[section] 2254 unless the harmlessness determination itself was unreasonable.” 

Davis v. Ayala, 135 S. Ct. 2187, 2199 (2015) (emphasis in original) (quoting Fry v. 

Pliler, 551 U.S. 112, 119 (2007)). “[A] state-court decision is not unreasonable if 

fairminded jurists could disagree on its correctness.” Id. (internal quotation marks 

and alteration omitted) (quoting Harrington v. Richter, 562 U.S. 86, 101 (2011)).

Assuming constitutional error here, fairminded jurists could disagree on 

whether any Miranda error was harmless. There was no dispute at trial that Diaz 

struck Officer Brower with a van; Diaz’s defense was that the collision was 

unintentional. Diaz’s statements in the interrogation did not conflict with or 

undermine that defense because he also told the interrogating officers that the 

collision was an accident. The only statements that might have prejudiced Diaz 

were those that the jury interpreted as lies to the interrogating officers. But to the 
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extent that the jury viewed falsehoods as evidence of his guilt, Diaz had already 

made overtly false statements to the police, including that he was not in the 

relevant city at all, before any Miranda violation took place. This record does not 

show that “the state court’s decision to reject his claim was so lacking in 

justification that there was an error well understood and comprehended in existing 

law beyond any possibility for fairminded disagreement.” Id. (internal quotation 

marks omitted) (quoting Harrington, 562 U.S. at 103).

AFFIRMED.