Court Opinion

ID: 9498474
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 17:18:25.919056+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:58:51.187931
License: Public Domain

THOMPSON, Senior Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
I respectfully dissent.
A further statement of the facts seems appropriate. The petitioner, Musladin, and his wife, Pam, were married but separated at the time of the crimes of which Musladin was convicted. Pam was living at her mother’s house with her brother Michael Albaugh, her fiancé Tom Studer, and Garrick Musladin, her then three-year-old son by Musladin. On the day of the shooting, Musladin went to the house to pick up Garrick for a scheduled weekend visitation.
The prosecutor presented evidence that an argument ensued between Pam and Musladin in the driveway, during which Musladin pushed Pam to the ground and reached for a gun in his car. Albaugh, standing in the driveway, yelled, “He’s got a gun.” Pam and Studer ran up the driveway. Musladin fired the gun at Pam and Studer, hitting Studer in the back of the shoulder. Pam ran into the house and out the back door. Studer fell to the ground and attempted to crawl underneath a truck in the garage. Musladin entered the ga*662rage and fired a second shot which ricocheted into Studer’s head, killing him.
Musladin presented a different version of these events. He admitted shooting at Studer and killing him, but claimed perfect and imperfect self-defense. He testified that he believed Albaugh was carrying a machete and Studer a gun, and that he fired both shots out of fear for his life. After firing the shots, he got in his car and drove away.
Musladin was tried and convicted of first-degree murder of Studer and attempted murder of Pam.
I disagree with the majority’s reliance upon our decision in Norris v. Risley, 918 F.2d 828 (9th Cir.1990), for the application in this case of the rule of Estelle v. Williams, 425 U.S. 501, 96 S.Ct. 1691, 48 L.Ed.2d 126 (1976). In Williams, the Court determined it to have been a violation of the right to a fair trial for the state to have compelled the defendant to wear prison clothing during his trial. Id. at 505, 96 S.Ct. 1691. The Court held the prison clothing impaired the defendant’s presumption of innocence. Id. In the present case, the state court permitted relatives of the deceased victim to wear buttons in the courtroom. The buttons disclosed only the deceased victim’s picture, nothing else, and had nothing to do with the defendant.
Our Norris case was a case involving three women who wore buttons in the courtroom during the defendant’s trial for rape, but that case is not controlling here. The buttons in Norris were two and one-half inches in diameter and bore the words “Women Against Rape.” Norris, 918 F.2d at 830. “[T]he word ‘rape’ [was] underlined with a broad red stroke.” Id. We stated: “[T]he buttons’ message, which implied that Norris raped the complaining witness, constituted a continuing reminder that various spectators believed Norris’s guilt before it was proven, eroding the presumption of innocence.” Id. at 831.
Here, the buttons were three to four inches in diameter and, except for the deceased victim’s picture, there was nothing else on them. The buttons conveyed no “message.” As the state appellate court stated, “The simple photograph of Tom Studer was unlikely to have been taken as a sign of anything other than the normal grief occasioned by the loss of a family member.”
Further, it is difficult to distinguish this case from the routine situation of a deceased victim’s family members, without buttons, sitting as a group in a courtroom during a trial. Jurors in such a trial surely would recognize the group for what it is. The addition of buttons worn by them showing only the victim’s photograph would add little if anything to any possible risk of impermissibly prejudicing the jury.
Although the state appellate court in the present case commented that it “consider[ed] the wearing of the photographs of victims in a courtroom to be an ‘impermissible factor coming into play,’ the practice of which should be discouraged,” quoting the “impermissible factor” language from Williams, 425 U.S. at 505, 96 S.Ct. 1691 (which the Supreme Court also quoted in Holbrook v. Flynn, 475 U.S. 560, 570, 106 S.Ct. 1340, 89 L.Ed.2d 525 (1986)), the state court’s “impermissible factor” comment is most reasonably understood as reflecting that court’s view that buttons bearing a victim’s photograph should not be worn in a courtroom. The comment did not change the buttons or make them something they were not. Moreover, the state court’s additional comment that the buttons did not “brand[] defendant ‘with an unmistakable mark of guilt’ ” is most reasonably understood as an explanation that the buttons were not “so inherently prejudicial as to pose an unacceptable *663threat to [the] right to a fair trial.” Holbrook, 475 U.S. at 572, 106 S.Ct. 1340.
In sum, I do not believe the decision by the California Court of Appeal was “contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States.” See 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1). The state court’s decision was not “contrary to” any such federal law, because the state court did not “ ‘appl[y] a rule that contradicts the governing law set forth in [Supreme Court] cases,’ ” nor did the state court “ ‘confront[ ] a set of facts that are materially indistinguishable from a decision of [the Supreme] Court and nevertheless arrive[] at a result different from [Supreme Court] precedent.’ ” Lockyer v. Andrade, 538 U.S. 63, 73, 123 S.Ct. 1166, 155 L.Ed.2d 144 (2003) (quoting Williams v. Taylor, 529 U.S. 362, 405-06, 120 S.Ct. 1495, 146 L.Ed.2d 389 (2000)).
Nor does the state court’s decision abridge the “unreasonable application” clause of 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1). “The ‘unreasonable application’ clause requires the state court decision to be more than incorrect or erroneous. The state court’s application of clearly established law must be objectively unreasonable.” Lockyer, 538 U.S. at 75, 123 S.Ct. 1166 (internal citations omitted). Here, even if erroneous (which it was not), the California Court of Appeal’s decision was not “objectively unreasonable.”
The petitioner also asserts a number of other claims that he argues merit habeas relief. I would reject those claims as well, and thus would affirm the district court.