Daniel Gonzales v. Michael Stainer

MEMORANDUM

California prisoner Daniel R. Gonzales appeals the denial of his 28 U.S.C. § 2254 habeas corpus petition. He contends that the admission of certain statements at his trial violated the Confrontation Clause. The relevant state court decision applied harmless-error analysis to three instances of hearsay: (1) statements made by an eyewitness, Yesenia Simon, to a police officer; (2) statements made by Gonzales’s aunt, Teresa Garcia, used as the basis for a hypothetical posed to an expert; and (3) the aunt’s statements repeated to her by' the prosecutor while she invoked the Fifth Amendment on the witness stand. The state court decision survives review under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA), and we therefore affirm.

Denial of a habeas petition is reviewed de novo. Parker v. Small, 665 F.3d 1143, 1147 (9th Cir.2011). Under AEDPA, federal courts may grant relief to state prisoners only where the state-court adjudication of a claim on the merits was either (1) “contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court,” or (2) “based on an unreasonable determination of the facts in…