HI TRUONG V. D. RUNNELS, No. 12-15166 (9th Cir. 2014)

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FILED NOT FOR PUBLICATION UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS AUG 18 2014 MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK U.S. COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT HI QUOC TRUONG, No. 12-15166 Petitioner - Appellant, D.C. No. 3:06-cv-04235-MMC v. MEMORANDUM* D. L. RUNNELS, Warden, High Desert State Prison, Respondent - Appellee. Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of California Maxine M. Chesney, Senior District Judge, Presiding Submitted August 13, 2014** San Francisco, California Before: KOZINSKI, Chief Judge, and McKEOWN and CLIFTON, Circuit Judges. Hi Quoc Truong appeals the district court s denial of his 28 U.S.C. § 2254 habeas corpus petition. * This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent except as provided by 9th Cir. R. 36-3. ** The panel unanimously concludes this case is suitable for decision without oral argument. See Fed. R. App. P. 34(a)(2). We reject Truong s assertion that the California Superior Court s decision is objectively unreasonable because the court failed to consider facts that were, in his view, plainly relevant. [A] federal court may not second-guess a state court s fact-finding process unless, after review of the state-court record, it determines that the state court was not merely wrong, but actually unreasonable. Taylor v. Maddox, 366 F.3d 992, 999 (9th Cir. 2004). Neither occurred here. The trial court s comment about the dispatch tape s ambiguity does not demonstrate that counsel acted unreasonably, nor was the scope of the Superior Court s fact finding objectively unreasonable. The Superior Court s conclusion that there was no reasonable probability of a more favorable outcome, even had Truong s counsel presented a manslaughter defense, was not based on an unreasonable application of the law or an unreasonable determination of the facts given the evidence presented. See 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d). Reviewing the Superior Court s decision with doubl[e] deferen[ce], Knowles v. Mirzayance, 556 U.S. 111, 112 (2009), we conclude that the court did not unreasonably apply the standard for ineffective assistance of counsel under Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668 (1984). AFFIRMED. 2

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