Truett Watts v. Rick Coursey

MEMORANDUM

An Oregon jury convicted Petitioner Truett John Watts of murder. The Oregon post-conviction courts rejected Watts’s contention that he received ineffective assistance of counsel (IAC) at trial. Watts filed a federal habeas petition raising the same IAC claim he presented in state post-conviction proceedings, and the district court denied the petition. We have jurisdiction over Watts’s appeal pursuant to 28 U.S.C. §§ 1291 and 2253, and we affirm.

The Oregon courts did not have a full and fair opportunity to act on the IAC claim Watts presents here: that trial counsel should have pursued a defense theory based on Watts’s Paxil ingestion and a rumor that the murder victim might have sexually abused Watts. O’Sullivan v. Boerckel, 526 U.S. 838, 842 , 119 S.Ct. 1728 , 144 L.Ed.2d 1 (1999). Proper exhaustion in state court requires a specific statement of operative facts supporting a claim. Wood v. Ryan, 693 F.3d 1104, 1117 (9th Cir.2012); Moormann v. Schriro, 426 F.3d 1044, 1056 (9th Cir.2005). A claim is not exhausted merely because the facts relied on by a petitioner in federal court were in the state-court record. Gulbrandson v. Ryan, 711 F.3d 1026, 1042 (9th Cir.2013).…