Kristopher C. Edwards v. A. Lamarque, Warden

439 F.3d 504 Kristopher C. EDWARDS, Petitioner-Appellee, v. A. LAMARQUE, Warden, Respondent-Appellant. No. 04-55752. United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit. Argued and Submitted June 7, 2005. Filed December 12, 2005. COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED David C. Cook, Deputy Attorney General, Los Angeles, CA, for the respondent-appellant. Steven S. Lubliner, Petaluma, CA, for the petitioner-appellee. Appeal from the United States District Court for the Central District of California; R. Gary Klausner, District Judge, Presiding. D.C. No. CV-01-10401-RGK. Before: B. FLETCHER, PAMELA A. RYMER and RAYMOND C. FISHER, Circuit Judges. OPINION FISHER, Circuit Judge. 1 Petitioner-appellee Kristopher C. Edwards ("Edwards") was convicted of murder in state court and filed a federal habeas corpus petition alleging, among other things, ineffective assistance of counsel. The district court granted the petition, finding that trial counsel's actions leading to Edwards' waiver of his marital privilege constituted ineffective assistance of counsel and prejudiced Edwards. The state appeals; we affirm. I. BACKGROUND 2 On July 17, 1991, the body of Don Thomas was found in an alley behind a barbershop…

Petitioner-appellee Kristopher C. Edwards (“Edwards”) was convicted of murder in state court and filed a federal habe-as corpus petition alleging, among other things, ineffective assistance of counsel. The district court granted the petition, finding that trial counsel’s actions leading to Edwards’ waiver of his marital privilege constituted ineffective assistance of counsel and prejudiced Edwards. The state appeals; we affirm.

I. BACKGROUND

On July 17, 1991, the body of Don Thomas was found in an alley behind a barbershop where Edwards worked. Thomas had died of multiple gunshot wounds from a .38 caliber gun and 9-mm gun. Five years later, after a tip from Edwards’ wife, police arrested Edwards in Detroit, and he was tried in California for the murder and for insurance fraud.

Before trial, and in anticipation of Edwards’ wife Kemet Gaines (“Gaines”) appearing as a witness, Edwards’ counsel John Meyers (“Meyers”) raised the issue of Edwards’ marital privilege under California Evidence Code § 980 and the presumption of confidentiality of marital communications under California Evidence Code § 917. The trial court ruled that Gaines could testify about any discussions…

dissenting:

I part company because in my view, the state courts did not make an unreasonable determination of the facts in light of the record before them when they found that John Meyers, Edwards’s counsel at his first trial, made a tactical decision in asking Edwards questions on the stand that waived the marital communications privilege. Nor did the state courts apply Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668 , 104 S.Ct. 2052 , 80 L.Ed.2d 674 (1984), unreasonably in concluding that this was not an unreasonable strategy for Meyers to pursue, given the substantial amount of circumstantial evidence implicating Edwards that had already been presented, an implicit confession by Edwards to the victim’s cousin that he was the murderer, Edwards’s unexplained flight with his wife two days after the murder, and Meyers’s reasonable belief, in light of the state of California law at the time, that he could elicit testimony from Edwards about his conversations with his wife on the night after the murder without opening the door to his wife’s version of their conversation on the night of the murder. Therefore, I disagree with the decision of the district court granting Edwards’s habeas…