Bryan Sanchez v. Raymond Madden

NOT FOR PUBLICATION
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT
BRYAN SANCHEZ,
Petitioner-Appellant,
v.
RAYMOND MADDEN,
Respondent-Appellee.
No. 15-56742
D.C. No.
2:13-cv-07810-PA-MRW
MEMORANDUM*
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Central District of California
Percy Anderson, District Judge, Presiding
Argued and Submitted August 7, 2017
Pasadena, California
Before: REINHARDT, KOZINSKI, and CHRISTEN, Circuit Judges.
1. The California Court of Appeal’s decision was not contrary to Strickland
v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668 (1984). Although the state court initially indicated
that Sanchez needed to “prove he received an unreliable or fundamentally unfair
trial”—a higher hurdle than Strickland’s prejudice standard imposes—the court
FILED
OCT 04 2017
MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK
U.S. COURT OF APPEALS
* This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent
except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3.

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correctly applied Strickland in its analysis. “[I]t is the application, not the
recitation of a standard that matters for § 2254(d) purposes.” Hardy v. Chappell,
849 F.3d 803, 819 (9th Cir. 2016).
2. The state court did not unreasonably conclude that Sanchez was not
prejudiced by his lawyer’s deficient performance. Given the evidence that
contradicted Sanchez’s father’s alibi testimony, we cannot say that all fairminded
jurists would conclude that the state court’s prejudice decision was wrong. See
Harrington v. Richter, 562 U.S. 86, 101 (2011) (“A state court’s determination that
a claim lacks merit precludes federal habeas relief so long as ‘fairminded jurists
could disagree’ on the correctness of the state court’s decision.”).
3. Sanchez alternatively characterizes the state court’s decision as being
based on an unreasonable determination of the facts. The state court reviewed the
evidence presented at Sanchez’s trial and concluded that “a somewhat stronger
alibi would not have had any impact on the outcome.” That determination was not
unreasonable for the reason discussed above.
AFFIRMED.
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