Cavitt v. Cullen, No. 10-16988 (9th Cir. 2013)
Annotate this CasePetitioner was convicted of felony murder after he and his girlfriend robbed the house of her stepmother. After they left the stepmother hogtied and face-down with a sheet taped around her head, the stepmother was not breathing and had no pulse when police arrived. Petitioner argued that the "logical nexus" requirement between the robbery and the death was unconstitutionally vague, that its application in his case was unconstitutionally retroactive, and that the trial court's evidentiary rulings and jury instructions violated his constitutional rights. The court rejected petitioner's void-for-vagueness argument, concluding that there was a clear connection between the felony petitioner set out to commit and the stepmother's subsequent death. The court also concluded that petitioner was unable to identify any California case actually absolving a criminal defendant of felony murder for a killing done by his accomplice during a felony but not in furtherance of a felony. Accordingly, the California Supreme Court's decision was not an unreasonable application of clearly established federal law. Because there was a clear logical nexus between petitioner's crime and the stepmother's death, failure to instruct the jury on the required connection could not have prejudiced petitioner. The court rejected petitioner's remaining claims and affirmed the district court's denial of petitioner 28 U.S.C. 2254 habeas corpus petition.
Court Description: Habeas Corpus. The panel affirmed the district court’s denial of a 28 U.S.C. § 2254 habeas corpus petition challenging the California Supreme Court’s construction and application of the felony murder rule. Petitioner and a friend robbed the stepmother of petitioner’s girlfriend, then left the stepmother hogtied on the bed but alive. They pretended to bind the girlfriend and placed her on the bed next to her stepmother. Petitioner claimed that the girlfriend killed her stepmother after he left. The panel first rejected petitioner’s contention that the requirement of a “logical nexus” between the felony and the victim’s death under California law is unconstitutionally vague, because the California Supreme Court provided guidance as to what a logical nexus means, and because there were objective facts in this case that connected the victim’s death to the felony, even if someone else killed her after petitioner left the scene. The panel next held that the California Supreme Court’s adoption of the logical nexus rule in petitioner’s case was not an unforeseeable and retroactive judicial expansion of liability that violated clearly established federal law, when California case law suggested but no court had held that a robber was not liable for a killing that his co-felon committed during the robbery for reasons independent of the robbery. The panel rejected petitioner’s challenge to the trial court’s instructions relating to felony murder, because there was no harm in limiting the jury’s consideration of evidence that the girlfriend hated her stepmother, and the failure to instruct explicitly in terms of “nexus” was, at most, harmless error.
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