Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/558bv.pdf
Page Number: 281

120 

OCTOBER  TERM,  2009 

Syllabus 

McDANIEL,  WARDEN,  et al.  v.  BROWN 

certiorari to the united states court of appeals for 
the ninth circuit 

No. 08–559.  Decided January 11, 2010 

Jackson v.  Virginia, 443 U. S. 307, 324, entitles a state prisoner to habeas 
relief if a federal judge ﬁnds that “upon the record evidence adduced at 
the trial no rational trier of fact could have found proof of guilt beyond 
a  reasonable  doubt.”  A  Nevada  jury  convicted  respondent  of  rape 
based  on  DNA  evidence  matching  his  DNA  and  ample  physical  and 
other  evidence  of  his  guilt.  After  the  state  courts  denied  relief  on  di­
rect appeal and in postconviction proceedings, respondent ﬁled this fed­
eral  habeas petition,  claiming  that the  evidence  was  insufﬁcient to  con­
vict  him  and  that  the  Nevada  Supreme  Court’s  rejection  of  this  claim 
was both contrary to, and an unreasonable application of, Jackson.  Re­
lying  on  the  “Mueller  Report”  prepared  by  respondent’s  DNA  expert 
over  11  years  after  the  trial—which  suggested  that  the  State’s  DNA 
expert,  Renee  Romero,  had  committed  the  so-called  “prosecutor’s  fal­
lacy”  by  mischaracterizing  the  probability  that  someone  from  the  gen­
eral population would share respondent’s DNA, and that she had under­
estimated  the  likelihood  that  one  of  respondent’s  brothers  would  also 
match  the  DNA  at  the  crime  scene—the  District  Court  granted  relief 
on the Jackson claim.  The Ninth Circuit afﬁrmed. 

Held: 

1.  Because the trial record includes both the DNA evidence and other 
convincing evidence of guilt, the lower federal courts clearly misapplied 
Jackson.  Pp. 127–134. 

(a)  The  two  inaccuracies  on  which  this  case  turns  are  Romero’s 
commission of the prosecutor’s fallacy and her underestimate of the like­
lihood of a DNA match with one of respondent’s brothers.  Pp. 127–130. 
(b)  The Ninth Circuit’s analysis failed to preserve “the factﬁnder’s 
role  as  weigher  of  the  evidence”  by  reviewing  “all  of  the  evidence  . . .  
in  the  light  most  favorable  to  the  prosecution,”  Jackson,  supra,  at 
319,  and  it  further  erred  in  ﬁnding  that  the  Nevada  Supreme  Court’s 
resolution  of  the  Jackson  claim  was  objectively  unreasonable.  A  re­
viewing  court  must  consider  all  of  the  evidence  admitted  at  trial  when 
considering a Jackson claim, and ample DNA and non-DNA evidence in 
the  trial  record  supported  the  jury’s  guilty  verdict  under  Jackson. 
Even  assuming  that  the  Court  of  Appeals  could  have  considered  the 
Mueller  Report  in  the  context  of  a  Jackson  claim,  the  report  provided