SEATTLE (LN) — The 9th Circuit reversed the district court’s judgment granting habeas corpus relief to Mark Alan Bradford on his guilt-phase claims and setting aside his California conviction for first-degree murder, holding that the California Supreme Court’s summary denial of his Brady and ineffective assistance claims was not an unreasonable application of federal law.
Bradford, who was convicted of the 1988 murder of Lynea Kokes at the Panorama City Lodge in California, argued that the state suppressed blood-alcohol testing results and that his trial counsel was ineffective for failing to request those results or investigate his intoxication.
The panel, in an opinion by Judge Daniel P. Collins, rejected Bradford’s contention that the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo undermines the highly deferential standard of review required under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA).
Bradford argued that Loper Bright’s rejection of judicial deference to executive agencies meant federal courts could no longer defer to state court interpretations of federal law in habeas proceedings. The panel held that Loper Bright addressed the Administrative Procedure Act and executive agencies, whereas AEDPA explicitly mandates deferential review of state court judgments.
"The text of AEDPA requires that federal habeas courts apply a highly deferential standard in reviewing any state court decision that rejected a federal claim on the merits," the panel wrote. "AEDPA’s mandate that federal courts defer to the state court’s application of federal law thus precludes the exercise of independent judgment on collateral habeas review."
The court also addressed the procedural posture, deciding to address the merits of Bradford’s claims under AEDPA before considering whether he could excuse his state-law procedural default under Coleman v. Thompson. The panel reasoned that the prejudice inquiry for the merits claims overlapped with the prejudice inquiry for excusing default, and the AEDPA standard was more deferential.
On the merits, the panel found the California Supreme Court could reasonably have concluded that Bradford failed to support his allegation that blood-alcohol testing had actually been performed on his blood sample. Bradford’s Brady claim rested exclusively on the assertion that such results existed and were suppressed.
"Because the California Supreme Court could reasonably have concluded that Bradford failed to provide sufficient factual support for his allegation that such blood-testing results existed, that court could likewise have reasonably concluded that the sole factual predicate for Bradford’s Brady claim was wholly vitiated," the opinion stated.
Regarding the ineffective assistance claim, the panel noted that even assuming defense counsel performed deficiently in failing to investigate and present evidence of Bradford’s intoxication, the state court could reasonably have determined Bradford failed to establish prejudice.
The panel reversed the district court’s judgment granting habeas relief and vacating Bradford’s first-degree murder conviction and special-circumstance finding. The case was remanded for the district court to enter an order denying Bradford’s habeas petition in its entirety regarding the guilt-phase claims and to resolve any remaining penalty-phase claims.
Bradford was sentenced to death for the murder of Lynea Kokes, who was found with her throat cut and stabbed multiple times in her apartment at the Lodge.