Lamarque

MEMORANDUM ***

Petitioner Victor Young Lee appeals the district court’s denial of his petition for writ of habeas corpus. As the facts are known to the parties, we do not recite them here. For the reasons discussed below, we affirm.

After the April 23, 1996 effective date of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA), this court may grant a habeas petition on behalf of a person in custody pursuant to the judgment of a state court only if that court’s decision was contrary to or involves an unreasonable application of clearly established federal law as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States. 28 U.S.C. § 2254 (d). Under AEDPA, “we must reverse a state court’s decision as involving an ‘unreasonable application’ of clearly established federal law when our independent review of the legal question does not merely allow us ultimately to conclude that the petitioner has the better of two reasonable legal arguments, but rather leaves us with a ‘firm conviction’ that one answer, the one rejected by the court, was correct and the other, the application of the federal law that the court adopted, was erroneous — in other words that clear error occurred.”…