Kevin Jones, Jr. v. K. Harrington

FOR PUBLICATION

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

KEVIN JONES, JR., No. 13-56360 Petitioner-Appellant, D.C. No. v. 2:10-cv-05071-GW-PLA

K. HARRINGTON,

Respondent-Appellee. OPINION

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Central District of California George H. Wu, District Judge, Presiding

Argued and Submitted August 31, 2015 Pasadena, California

Filed July 22, 2016

Before: Alex Kozinski, Diarmuid F. O’Scannlain, and Jay S. Bybee, Circuit Judges.

Opinion by Judge Bybee; Dissent by Judge O’Scannlain SUMMARY*

Habeas Corpus

The panel reversed the district court’s judgment denying California state prisoner Kevin Jones’s habeas corpus petition challenging his murder conviction, and remanded with instructions to grant the writ, in a case in which Jones, after hours of police questioning with little progress, told the officers “I don’t want to talk no more.”

The panel held that any reasonable jurist would have to conclude that when Jones said he did not want to talk “no more,” he meant it, and that by continuing to interrogate Jones after his invocation of his right to…

The Los Angeles Police Department suspected that defendant Kevin Jones was involved in a gang shooting that left one person dead and two injured. Detectives picked Jones up and began interrogating him. After hours of questioning, and little progress, Jones finally told the officers “I don’t want to talk no more.” Undeterred, the officers continued questioning Jones, and eventually, he made a number of incriminating statements. Jones’s statements were the lynchpin of the state’s prosecution against him — and Jones was convicted and sentenced to seventy-five years to life.

On direct appeal, Jones contended that officers were wrong to continue to interrogate him after he invoked his right to remain silent, and that his incriminating statements should not have been used against him. The California Court of Appeal held that Jones did not unambiguously invoke his right to remain silent, so no suppression was warranted. It reasoned that after officers continued to interrogate Jones with only a single follow-up question, he continued to talk and made statements that cast some doubt on whether he had actually invoked his right to remain silent.

But the Supreme Court has been…

dissenting:

A suspect who wishes to invoke his Fifth Amendment right to silence must do so “unambiguously.” Berghuis v. Thompkins, 560 U.S. 370, 381-82 , 130 S.Ct. 2250 , 176 L.Ed.2d 1098 (2010). Well into his interrogation, the suspect in this case made a single statement that, standing alone, might be characterized as an unambiguous invocation of such right. The California courts determined, however, that the suspect’s statement was not unambiguous when considered in full context. Whether one believes that determination to be correct or not, it unquestionably rests on a reasonable application of clearly established Supreme Court law to the facts of the case before us — and it must therefore *1143 stand under our deferential standard of review. See 28 U.S.C. § 2254 (d); Cullen v. Pinholster, 563 U.S. 170, 181 , 131 S.Ct. 1388 , 179 L.Ed.2d 557 (2011).

In reaching its conclusion to the contrary, the majority faults the state court for failing to apply Supreme Court precedent that post-dates the state court’s decision, attempts to extend readily distinguishable Supreme Court precedent to circumstances the Court has never considered, and ultimately grants relief to Jones because…