James Fuentes v. Fernando Gonzalez

MEMORANDUM

Fernando Gonzalez, Warden, appeals the district court’s decision to grant James Fuentes’s petition for habeas corpus. Fuentes was convicted in the California Superior Court of aiding and abetting Me-lecio Reyes in the first-degree murder of Francisco Ferreira in 2003. We have jurisdiction over this appeal pursuant to 28 U.S.C. §§ 1291 and 2253. We conclude that the California Court of Appeal was objectively reasonable in upholding Fuentes’s conviction and accordingly reverse the district court’s grant of Fuentes’s habeas petition.

Fuentes’s petition is subject to the provisions of the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (“AEDPA”), 28 U.S.C. §§ 2241-2255 . Under Section 2254(d) of AEDPA, where a state court decides the merits of a petitioner’s constitutional claim, a federal court may grant habeas relief with respect to that claim only if the state decision:

28 U.S.C. § 2254 (d).

“A state-court decision that correctly identifies the governing legal rule but applies it unreasonably to the facts of a particular prisoner’s case certainly would qualify as a decision ‘involv[ing] an unreasonable application of ... clearly established Federal law.’ ” Williams v.…