Stacey Dyer v. Tina Hornbeck

FOR PUBLICATION

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

STACEY DANIELLA DYER, No. 10-15044 Petitioner-Appellant, D.C. No. v. 1:09-cv-00150-

OWW-SMS

TINA HORNBECK,

Respondent-Appellee. OPINION

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of California Oliver W. Wanger, Senior District Judge, Presiding

Argued and Submitted November 6, 2012—San Francisco, California

Filed February 6, 2013

Before: Robert D. Sack*, Ronald M. Gould, and Milan D. Smith, Jr., Circuit Judges.

Opinion by Judge Sack; Concurrence by Judge M. Smith

* The Honorable Robert D. Sack, Senior Circuit Judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, sitting by designation. DYER V . HORNBECK

SUMMARY**

Habeas Corpus

Affirming the district court’s denial of a 28 U.S.C. § 2254 habeas corpus petition challenging the admission of statements Dyer made to police, the panel concluded that fairminded jurists could disagree as to whether Dyer was “in custody” when she made certain disputed statements, and that the state court’s decision therefore was not an unreasonable…

concurring in the judgment:

Three California Court of Appeal justices found that Stacey Dyer was not “in custody” when she was interrogated for nearly four hours in the dead of night at a police station located thirty minutes from her home. For the reasons discussed in this concurrence, were I sitting on direct appeal in the place of one those justices, I would have decided the custody issue differently. Because the habeas appeal before us is governed by the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, however, I am bound by controlling law to concur in the judgment denying Dyer’s petition for relief. See 28 U.S.C. § 2254 . Specifically, I am bound to concur in the judgment because we must apply a “highly deferential standard for evaluating state-court rulings, which demands that state-court decisions be given the benefit of the doubt.” Woodford v. Visciotti, 537 U.S. 19, 24 , 123 S.Ct. 357 , 154 L.Ed.2d 279 (2002) (per curiam) (citation and internal quotation omitted). Moreover, I do not find that my state colleagues’ conclusion rests on an “unreasonable application of clearly *1142 established Federal law,” 28 U.S.C. § 2254 (d)(1), or that the state court’s decision…

Opinion by Judge SACK; Concurrence by Judge M. SMITH.

OPINION

The petitioner-appellant, Stacey Daniella Dyer, appeals from the judgment entered on December 15, 2009, in United States District Court for the Eastern District of California (Oliver W. Wanger, Judge) denying her 28 U.S.C. § 2254 petition for a writ of habeas corpus. Dyer contends that the California Court of Appeal unreasonably applied clearly established Supreme Court precedent when it affirmed the trial court’s decision to admit as evidence statements made by Dyer during a station-house interview. She maintains that the interview was a custodial interrogation under Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 , 86 S.Ct. 1602 , 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966), and its progeny, and that because detectives failed to deliver the Miranda warnings required in such circumstances, her statements should have been excluded. Because we conclude that fairminded jurists could disagree as to whether Dyer was “in custody” when she made the statements in dispute, we affirm the district court’s denial of Dyer’s application for habeas relief.

BACKGROUND

On May 19, 2004, a California state jury returned a guilty verdict against Dyer on charges of…