Walden v. Shinn, No. 08-99012 (9th Cir. 2021)
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The Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court's denial of a habeas corpus petition challenging petitioner's Arizona state conviction for rape and murder and his death sentence. The panel concluded that the district court properly declined to grant habeas relief as to Claim I, which was based on the trial court's denial of severance. Given the Arizona Supreme Court's alternative ruling that evidence concerning each attack would have been admissible in separate trials on each attack, and petitioner's failure to assign any federal constitutional error to that dispositive ruling in his first PCR petition or his habeas petition, the panel affirmed the denial of habeas relief as to Claim 1.
The panel also concluded that the district court properly declined to grant habeas relief as to claim 2, which was based on the trial court's admission of three eyewitness identifications. The panel explained that the state court's rejection of this claim was not contrary to, or an unreasonable application of, clearly established federal law, nor did it rest on an unreasonable determination of the facts. The panel further concluded that the district court properly determined that McKinney v. Ryan, 813 F.3d 798 (9th Cir. 2015) (en banc), has no impact on Claim 31 of petitioner's habeas petition; as to Claim 4, the district court properly denied petitioner leave to amend his habeas petition to add five previously withdrawn ineffective assistance of counsel claims on the grounds that those claims are untimely and do not relate back to his timely-filed claims and that petitioner unduly delayed seeking leave to amend; and as to Claim 5, the district court properly concluded that the trial court's admission of 19 purportedly "gruesome" crime scene and autopsy photos does not entitle petitioner to habeas relief because the state court's decision did not involve an objectively unreasonable application of clearly established Supreme Court precedent or an objectively unreasonable determination of the facts.
Court Description: Habeas Corpus / Death Penalty. The panel affirmed the district court’s denial of Robert Lee Walden’s habeas corpus petition challenging his Arizona state conviction for rape and murder and his death sentence. The panel held that the district court properly declined to grant habeas relief as to Walden’s claim based on the trial court’s denial of his motion to sever the counts by victim, where Walden failed, in his first petition for post-conviction relief or his habeas petition, to assign any federal constitutional error to the Arizona Supreme Court’s alternative dispositive ruling that evidence concerning each attack would have been admissible in separate trials on each attack. The panel held that the district court properly declined to grant habeas relief as to Walden’s claim based on the trial court’s admission of eyewitness identifications. The panel held that the state court’s rejection of Walden’s due process challenge to the photographic lineup used was consistent with clearly established federal law and rested on factual findings that were objectively reasonable. The panel held that the state court did not rule contrary to, nor unreasonably apply, clearly established federal law when it determined that the police did not taint two victims’ identifications by informing each victim, after she had chosen Walden’s photo, that the police had a man in custody, or by providing one victim with WALDEN V. SHINN 3 an article concerning Walden’s arrest for another assault and a homicide. The panel also held that the Arizona Supreme Court reasonably declined to infer improper police influence from the fact that one witness selected Walden’s photo during an off-the-record conversation with a detective after she had tentatively identified another individual as resembling one of two men she had seen at one victim’s apartment complex. Because the Arizona Supreme Court reasonably determined that the three identifications were not the product of impermissibly suggestive police procedures, there was no need for the panel to assess the reliability of each identification under the totality of the circumstances. The panel rejected Walden’s challenge to one victim’s identification insofar as it rested on a factual basis that Walden failed to present to the Arizona Supreme Court. The panel held that McKinney v. Ryan, 813 F.3d 798 (9th Cir. 2015) (en banc), has no impact on the claim in Walden’s habeas petition that because the state trial court had prepared a special verdict before the submission of evidence, that court failed to properly consider his proffered mitigation evidence at sentencing. The panel wrote that because Walden did not in that claim identify causal nexus error by the Arizona Supreme Court, which conducted an independent review of Walden’s mitigation evidence, Walden’s belated claims of causal nexus error are not cognizable on appeal. The panel held that the district court properly denied Walden leave to amend his habeas petition to add five previously-withdrawn ineffective-assistance-of-counsel claims on the grounds that those claims are untimely and do not relate back to his timely-filed claims and that Walden unduly delayed seeking leave to amend. The panel also held that Walden is not entitled to equitable tolling. 4 WALDEN V. SHINN The panel held that the district court properly concluded that the trial court’s admission of 19 purportedly “gruesome” crime scene and autopsy photos does not entitle Walden to habeas relief because the state court’s decision did not involve an objectively unreasonable application of clearly established Supreme Court precedent or an objectively unreasonable determination of the facts.
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