Martinez v. Garcia
| Decision Date | 10 June 2004 |
| Docket Number | No. 02-56678.,02-56678. |
| Citation | 379 F.3d 1034 |
| Parties | Darrick MARTINEZ, Petitioner-Appellant, v. Rosie GARCIA, Respondent-Appellee. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Ninth Circuit |
Marilee Marshall, Pasadena, CA, for the petitioner-appellant.
Warren P. Robinson, Deputy Attorney General, San Diego, CA, for the respondent-appellee.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Central District of California; George H. King, District Judge, Presiding. D.C. No. CV-01-00766-GHK.
Before RUGGERO J. ALDISERT,* TALLMAN, and RAWLINSON, Circuit Judges.
We presume that a jury follows the instructions given by the trial court. Ho v. Carey, 332 F.3d 587, 594 (9th Cir.2003). When the instructions, however, combine two theories of guilt, one of which is untenable, and we cannot discern upon which theory the jury convicted, structural error has occurred. The state court's decision upholding Martinez's conviction was contrary to clearly established federal law. Accordingly, the district court's denial of Martinez's habeas petition challenging Count 2 of his conviction is reversed.1 For reasons stated in the memorandum disposition issued contemporaneously with this opinion, we affirm the denial of Martinez's petition on all other grounds.
The Petitioner, Darrick Martinez, was charged in an information with the attempted murder of Peter Anthony Jimenez; the attempted murder of Robert Paul Jimenez; and shooting at an inhabited dwelling.
Peter Jimenez testified that he was in the living room at his brother's house when he responded to a knock at the front door. He saw Martinez through the screen door. Martinez asked Jimenez to open the door. Jimenez noticed that Martinez's hands were trembling and that he was holding something shiny. With the gun extended arm's length, Martinez shot Jimenez in the chest area. Jimenez was also shot in the back as he ran. Jimenez identified Martinez as the person who shot him.
Robert Jimenez, Peter Jimenez's brother, testified that he was awakened by gunshots. When he went to the kitchen, he found his brother, Peter Jimenez, lying on the floor. After discovering that the kitchen telephone was inoperative, Robert started toward his room to retrieve a cordless phone, and was hit on the side of his chest by a second round of gunshots. He did not see who shot him.
Karen Cervantes, the girlfriend of Robert's son, testified that she heard a bang on the front door and then gunshots. She also heard Martinez, her cousin, yelling outside the house.
Martinez's brother, Rocky Martinez, and their mother, testified that, except for approximately five minutes, when they went next door to their cousin's house, both brothers were at their mother's home all evening.
Martinez denied shooting the Jimenez brothers and asserted that he was at his mother's house at the time of the incident.
Martinez was charged in an information with the attempted murder of Peter Anthony Jimenez (Count I); the attempted murder of Robert Paul Jimenez, Sr. (Count II); and shooting at an inhabited dwelling (Count III). During trial, the prosecution amended the information to allege that the attempted murders were willful, deliberate, and premeditated.
The trial court instructed the jury on both premeditation and transferred intent in relation to the attempted murder charges. Instruction Number 35 read:
If you find that the attempted murder was preceded and accompanied by a clear, deliberate intent to kill, which was the result of deliberation and pre-meditation, so that it must have been formed upon pre-existing reflection and not under a sudden heat of passion or other condition precluding the idea of deliberation, it is attempt to commit willful, deliberate and premeditated murder.
The law does not undertake to measure in units of time the length of the period during which the thought must be pondered before it can ripen into an intent to kill which is truly deliberate and premeditated. The time will vary with different individuals and under varying circumstances.
The true test is not the duration of time, but rather the extent of the reflection. A cold, calculated judgment and decision may be arrived at in a short period of time, but a mere unconsidered and rash impulse, even though it includes an intent to kill, is not deliberation and premeditation.
To constitute willful, deliberate and premeditated attempted murder, the would-be slayer must weigh and consider the question of killing and the reasons for and against such a choice and, having in mind the consequences, decides to kill and makes a direct but ineffectual act to kill another human being.
The People have the burden of proving the truth of this allegation. If you have a reasonable doubt that it is true, you must find it to be not true.
You will include a special finding on that question in your verdict, using a form that will be supplied for that purpose.
Instruction Number 36 read:
When one attempts to kill a certain person, but by mistake or inadvertence injures a different person, the crime, if any, so committed is the same as though the person originally intended to be killed had been injured.
The jury found Martinez guilty on all counts. However, the jury verdict form relating to the allegation that Martinez will-fully and deliberately attempted to murder Robert Jimenez either contains a mistake or is evidence that the jury found Martinez guilty based upon the transferred intent theory. The form is labeled, "First Allegation as to Court 2[the count regarding Robert Jimenez]," while the body of the form states that: "We ... find the allegation as to Count 1[the count regarding Peter Jimenez], that defendant, Darrick Martinez, committed the aforesaid attempted murder willfully, deliberately and with premeditation ..."
The California Court of Appeal affirmed Martinez's conviction. Martinez subsequently filed a federal habeas petition. The assigned magistrate judge recommended that the district court deny Martinez's federal habeas petition. The district court adopted the magistrate judge's recommendation and entered judgment dismissing Martinez's habeas petition. Martinez filed a timely appeal.
We review de novo the district court's denial of a habeas corpus petition. Clark v. Murphy, 331 F.3d 1062, 1067 (9th Cir.2003). The provisions of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 ("AEDPA") are applicable, since Martinez filed his petition after AEDPA's effective date. See id.
"[W]e may not grant federal habeas relief" unless the state appellate court's2 "adjudication of the claim resulted in a decision that was contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal law as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States." Id. (citation and internal quotation marks omitted). "A decision is contrary to clearly established federal law if it fails to apply the correct controlling authority, or if it applies the controlling authority to a case involving facts materially indistinguishable from those in a controlling case, but nonetheless reaches a different result." Id. (citation omitted). "A state court's decision involves an unreasonable application of federal law if the state court identifies the correct governing legal principle ... but unreasonably applies that principle to the facts of the prisoner's case." Id. (citation and internal quotation marks omitted) (alteration in the original). "Even if the federal habeas court concludes that the state court decision applied clearly established federal law incorrectly, relief is appropriate only if that application is also objectively unreasonable." Id. (citation omitted).
The California Court of Appeal and the district court proceeded on the assumption that the transferred intent instruction was inapplicable to Martinez's attempted murder charges and should not have been given. We must therefore determine whether the transferred intent jury instruction introduced structural error into the trial by inviting an improper theory of culpability in Martinez's trial.
The courts' assumptions that the transferred intent instruction was malaprops are well grounded in California case law. In People v. Czahara, 203 Cal.App.3d 1468, 250 Cal.Rptr. 836 (1988), the California Court of Appeal considered the precise transferred intent instruction given in Martinez's case. Id. at 1472, 250 Cal.Rptr. 836. It concluded that:
The purpose of the transferred intent rule — to ensure that prosecution and punishment accord with culpability — would not be served by convicting a defendant of two or more attempted murders for a single act by which he intended to kill only one person ... there is a difference in culpability between an assailant who deliberately sets out to kill one person and in addition kills another accidentally, and one who deliberately kills two victims. Application of the transferred intent rule to the former would wipe out that distinction.
Id. at 1474, 250 Cal.Rptr. 836 (citation omitted). The court subsequently held that the instruction was prejudicial:
We cannot say that the instructional error was harmless. While there was evidence of hostility between Czahara and Johnson which, together with the manner of the attack, would support an inference that Czahara intended to shoot both victims, the jury could easily have entertained a reasonable doubt as to whether Czahara intended to shoot Johnson. Christie testified that the defendant aimed the first shot directly at her; there was no testimony showing at whom the second shot was aimed ... The conviction for attempted murder of Johnson must therefore be reversed....
Id. at 1475-76, 250 Cal.Rptr. 836.
This California case demonstrates the importance of the intent requirement for attempted murder and the manner in which transferred intent instructions undermine...
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