United States v. Joseph Fuentes

MEMORANDUM

The district court did not err in rejecting Fuentes’s claims that he suffered ineffective assistance of trial counsel due to the manner in which trial counsel handled the polygraph test. Because Fuentes freely and voluntarily stipulated to the admissibility of the polygraph, he cannot later complain about its admissibility, see United States v. Technic Servs., Inc., 314 F.3d 1031, 1045 (9th Cir.2002), overruled on other grounds by United States v. Contreras, 593 F.3d 1135 (9th Cir.2010) (en banc) (per curiam); accordingly, objection to the admission of the results would have been futile, see Shah v. United States, 878 F.2d 1156, 1162 (9th Cir.1989). Trial counsel’s decision to allow the polygraph test to go forward, and his approach to challenging the reliability of the polygraph results, fall within the “wide range of reasonable professional assistance” which we deem to be reasonably effective assistance. See Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668, 689 , 104 S.Ct. 2052 , 80 L.Ed.2d 674 (1984). Moreover, given the weight of the evidence against Fuentes, there is no reasonable probability that the result of the proceedings would have been different but for the alleged…