Gregory Sturm v. Matthew Cate

MEMORANDUM

Gregory Allen Sturm appeals from the district court’s judgment denying his 28 U.S.C. § 2254 habeas petition. We have jurisdiction pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1291 , and we affirm.

Sturm argues that he was tried and convicted while incompetent in violation of his Fourteenth Amendment right to due process, and that the California Supreme Court unreasonably denied his claim without first holding an evidentiary hearing. We disagree. While Sturm recently drummed up evidence describing mental and cognitive impairments during trial, these opinions were provided more than a decade after the trial and are refuted by the contemporaneous record as a whole. See Sully v. Ayers, 725 F.3d 1057, 1070-72 (9th Cir. 2013), cert. denied — U.S. -, 134 S.Ct. 2697 , 189 L.Ed.2d 744 (2014) (holding the California Supreme Court’s summary denial of a claim of incompetence was not unreasonable based on the record before the court); Boyde v. Brown, 404 F.3d 1159, 1166-67 (9th Cir. 2005) (holding that retrospective declarations of incompetence are disfavored where evidence from the time of the trial fails to support those declarations).

Because Sturm failed to establish substantial doubt about his…