Carpenter

*3 MEMORANDUM *

Petitioner-Appellant Virgil L. Carpenter appeals the denial of his petition for habeas corpus challenging his jury trial convictions for sexual abuse and sodomy. We review de novo the district court’s denial of Carpenter’s section 2254 petition. Alvarado v. Hill, 252 F.3d 1066, 1068 (9th Cir. 2001).

In separate trials, Carpenter was convicted of sexually abusing first a neighbor’s child and then a foster child in his care. He asserts that a juror in the second trial had been made aware of his first conviction but was not removed by the trial judge. He also asserts that Sally Nicholes, the lead investigator in the case and herself a victim of past sexual abuse, suffered from severe work-related mental health problems that were not disclosed to the defense in response to its Brady request, and that she had prompted the fabrication of the testimony of the two girls. Finally, he charges that the district court erred in refusing the defense access to Nicholes’s worker’s compensation files. We affirm the district court’s rejection of his petition.

In the second trial, held in a different county from the first, a juror informed the court that she had been told in a…