Harold Coleman Hall v. Director of Corrections California State Attorney General

343 F.3d 976 Harold Coleman HALL, Petitioner-Appellant, v. DIRECTOR OF CORRECTIONS; California State Attorney General, Respondents-Appellees. No. 02-55758. United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit. Argued and Submitted March 4, 2003 — Pasadena, California. Filed September 8, 2003. William J. Genego, Nasatir, Hirsch, Podberesky & Genego, Santa Monica, California, for the petitioner-appellant. Mary Sanchez, Supervising Deputy Attorney General, Los Angeles, California, for the respondents-appellees. Appeal from the United States District Court for the Central District of California; Dickran M. Tevrizian, District Judge, Presiding. D.C. No. CV-99-00204-DT. Before: Donald P. LAY, * Michael Daly HAWKINS and Richard C. TALLMAN, Circuit Judges. PER CURIAM Opinion; Dissenting Opinion by Judge TALLMAN. PER CURIAM: 1 In 1990, California state prisoner Harold Coleman Hall was convicted by a jury of first degree murder for the killing of Nola Duncan. 1 The conviction was based almost entirely on Hall's confession, obtained while Hall was in custody for an unrelated crime. The confession, however, was rather suspect, as the subsequent police investigation revealed that various…

PER CURIAM Opinion; Dissenting Opinion by Judge TALLMAN.

In 1990, California state prisoner Harold Coleman Hall was convicted by a jury of first degree murder for the killing of Nola Duncan. 1 The conviction was based almost entirely on Hall’s confession, obtained while Hall was in custody for an unrelated crime. The confession, however, was rather suspect, as the subsequent police investigation revealed that various aspects of it were clearly untrue. Unable to find any physical evidence to connect Hall to the murder, the prosecution relied upon two documents provided by a jailhouse informant, Cornelius Lee, to corroborate Hall’s confession. These “jailhouse notes” •were admitted at trial without testimony by the informant as to their authenticity.

The notes purported to be a series of questions and answers between Lee and Hall; after the trial, however, Lee confessed he had submitted innocent or innocuous questions to Hall and then erased and altered them after Hall had written his answers in order to make them incriminating. 2 Expert testimony confirmed that erasures had been made on the documents. After hearing testimony regarding the falsification of the jailhouse notes, the…

dissenting.

Despite repeated admonishment by the United States Supreme Court of this court’s habeas jurisprudence, once again my colleagues persist in ignoring the AEDPA standard of review in order to invalidate a reasonable state court determination of guilt in a 1985 murder case. One would think after reading the court’s opinion that the record clearly established the following two facts:

Conspicuous by its absence from the majority’s view of the case is the evidence that:

Because these overlooked facts sufficiently corroborate Hall’s confession of guilt and render the state appellate court determination objectively reasonable, I respectfully dissent.

I

We cannot grant habeas relief in this case unless the state court’s determination was “based on an unreasonable determination of the facts in light of the evidence presented in the State court proceeding.” 28 U.S.C. § 2254 (d)(2). In Torres v. Prunty, 223 F.3d 1103, 1108 (9th Cir.2000), we found that the standards governing the *986 “unreasonable determination” clause of § 2254(d)(2) were equivalent to the standards governing the “unreasonable application” clause of § 2254(d)(1). At the time, our case law improperly…