Court Opinion

ID: 9496384
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 16:25:14.137298+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:57:32.664911
License: Public Domain

RAWLINSON, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
I respectfully dissent.
As we recently acknowledged, federal habeas relief should not be granted lightly. Rather, the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (“AEDPA”) “imposes a highly deferential standard for evaluating state-court rulings[;] demands that state court decisions be given the benefit of the doubt”[;] and mandates “our full respect” for rulings of our “co-equal judiciary.” Clark v. Murphy, 317 F.3d 1038, 1043 (9th Cir.2003) (citations and internal quotation marks omitted).
With those cautions in mind, I proceed to the first inquiry accompanying habeas review: “whether the state court erred at all.” Id. at 1044 (citation omitted). If the state court committed no error, our habeas inquiry ends. See id.
*923Petitioner Ambrose Gill (“Gill”) was convicted in 1976 of one count of assault with a deadly weapon and three counts of assault by means of force likely to produce great bodily injury. During an interview with a probation officer, Gill admitted that he personally wielded a baseball bat during a Saturday-night fracas. Fast forward to 1997, with Gill facing a possible life sentence under California’s “Three Strikes Law.” Twenty-one years after the fact, at his “Three Strikes” sentencing hearing, Gill sought to challenge the statements attributed to him in the probation department report. The state trial court denied Gill’s request to refute the prior statement by testifying to the contrary at his “Three Strikes” sentencing hearing.
The trial court denied Gill’s request in part because the court recognized that passage of time had lessened the likelihood of obtaining countervailing eyewitness testimony regarding the extent of Gill’s personal involvement in administering the assaultive blows. The trial court also considered the existence of binding state precedent limiting the prosecution to the record of conviction when establishing the existence of a prior conviction.
The California Court of Appeal confirmed the trial court’s ruling. Citing People v. Bartow, 46 Cal.App.4th 1573, 1581, 54 Cal.Rptr.2d 482 (1996), the Court of Appeal declared that “neither the prosecution nor the defense may call live witnesses.” People v. Gill, Consolidated Case Nos. G022286, G022287, G022288, slip op. at 10 (Cal.Ct.App. March 9, 1999). The Court of Appeal noted that “a defendant’s statements in a post-conviction probation report do reliably reflect the conduct of which a defendant was convicted. The judge would surely note any deviation in the description of the crime from the evidence adduced at trial.” Id. at 12.
Finally, in disposing of Gill’s due process claim, the California Court of Appeal observed that “[t]he reliability of the [probation] report is further ensured by the fact that defendant had the opportunity to challenge the accuracy of the report, at sentencing and to correct any misstatements. Thus, while there may be a case where due process will demand that a court hear the defendant concerning a prior conviction, this is not it.” Id. at 13(citation and internal quotation marks omitted).
The majority assigns error to the California Court of Appeal’s ruling, relying on the United States Supreme Court’s opinion in Rock v. Arkansas, 483 U.S. 44, 55-56, 107 S.Ct. 2704, 97 L.Ed.2d 37 (1987). However, the majority gives short shrift to the Supreme Court’s recognition that “[o]f course, the right to present relevant testimony is not without limitation [and] may, in appropriate cases, bow to accommodate other legitimate interests in the criminal trial process.” Id. at 55, 107 S.Ct. 2704. (emphasis added) (citation and internal quotation marks omitted). The Supreme Court’s matter-of-fact acknowledgment of the need to accommodate other procedural priorities calls into question the majority’s facile application of Rock to the facts of this case. For the Supreme Court expressly cautioned that the exercise of the defendant’s right must be consistent with “both fairness and reliability.” Id. at 56, n. 11, 107 S.Ct. 2704.
Is fairness fostered if the defendant presents testimony at the Three Strikes Hearing when the State may not? Do twenty-year-old recollections serve the interests of reliability? The California Court of Appeal answered these questions in the negative, and committed no error in doing so. In accordance with the dictates of Rock, the California Court of Appeal restricted defendant’s right to testify after considering the parallel interests of fair*924ness and reliability. The California Court of Appeal ruled that on the facts of this case, defendant’s right to testify did not outweigh the other interests properly considered by the court. The district court gave appropriate deference and respect to the state court’s decision. I would do the same.