Steven Allen Jones v. ERIC ARNOLD, Acting Warden and PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA

NOT FOR PUBLICATION
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT
STEVEN ALLEN JONES,
Petitioner - Appellant,
v.
ERIC ARNOLD, Acting Warden and
PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF
CALIFORNIA,
Respondents - Appellees.
No. 12-17825
D.C. No. 2:10-cv-00196-MCE-
TJB
MEMORANDUM*
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Eastern District of California
Morrison C. England, Jr., Chief District Judge, Presiding
Argued and Submitted September 10, 2014
San Francisco, California
Before: BEA, IKUTA, and HURWITZ, Circuit Judges.
Steven Allen Jones appeals the district court’s denial of his federal habeas
petition. The district court granted a certificate of appealability on Jones’s claim
FILED
FEB 13 2015
MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK
U.S. COURT OF APPEALS
* This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent
except as provided by 9th Cir. R. 36-3.

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that his due process rights were violated when he was convicted on the basis of
uncorroborated accomplice testimony.
The district court did not err in denying Jones’s due process claim. Jones
argues that his due process rights were violated because he was arbitrarily deprived
of his state law rights under section 1111 of the California Penal Code, which
provides that a defendant cannot be convicted based on accomplice testimony
unless the testimony is sufficiently corroborated. This argument fails, because the
California Court of Appeal found that the accomplice testimony was sufficiently
corroborated under state law, and this court may not consider any question of state
substantive law. Wainwright v. Sykes, 433 U.S. 72, 81 (1977). Jones does not
argue that there is a federal right to corroboration; rather, his constitutional claim
depends entirely on the assertion that there was not sufficient evidence to satisfy the
California statute. Because the state court considered Jones’s section 1111 claim
and found sufficient corroboration of the accomplice testimony, Jones was not
arbitrarily deprived of a state law entitlement in violation of his Fourteenth
Amendment due process rights. See Laboa v. Calderon, 224 F.3d 972, 979 (9th
Cir. 2000).
Jones also asks us to expand the certificate of appealability to include four
additional claims. Because Jones has not “made a substantial showing of the denial
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of a constitutional right” on any of these claims, we deny Jones’s motion to expand
his certificate of appealability. See 28 U.S.C. § 2253(c)(2); see also Miller-El v.
Cockrell, 537 U.S. 322, 336 (2003).
AFFIRMED.
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Jones v. Arnold, No. 12-17825
IKUTA, Circuit Judge, concurring in the result.
I concur in the result reached by the majority, but write separately because
the majority fails to comply with AEDPA in resolving Jones’s due process claim.
In his direct appeal before the California Court of Appeal, Jones raised two
claims: first, that he had been convicted on the basis of uncorroborated accomplice
testimony in violation of section 1111 of the California Penal Code; and second,
that this error of state law arbitrarily deprived him of a state created liberty interest
in violation of his Fourteenth Amendment right to due process. The California
Court of Appeal held that there was no error of state law because there was
sufficient evidence at trial to corroborate the testimony of the accomplice. It did
not address Jones’s due process argument. On federal habeas review, Jones argues
only that the state court erred in rejecting his due process claim.
Under AEDPA, we must determine whether the California Court of
Appeal’s rejection of Jones’s federal due process claim was “contrary to, or
involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal law, as
determined by the Supreme Court of the United States.” 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1).
Although the state court did not address this federal claim, we presume that the
state court adjudicated it on the merits. Johnson v. Williams, 133 S. Ct. 1088, 1096
FILED
FEB 13 2015
MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK
U.S. COURT OF APPEALS

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(2013). The parties do not dispute this conclusion.
When a habeas petitioner bases his federal due process claim on an error of
state law at trial, AEDPA requires us to defer to the state court’s rejection of that
claim if the state court could reasonably conclude that the defendant received a
fundamentally fair trial. See Swarthout v. Cooke, 131 S. Ct. 859, 863 (2011); see
also Rivera v. Illinois, 556 U.S. 148, 162 (2009). Under clearly established
Supreme Court precedent, that is all that due process requires in this context.
Rivera, 556 U.S. at 162. Here, the state court could reasonably determine Jones
received a fundamentally fair trial, and therefore its rejection of Jones’s due
process claim is not contrary to or an unreasonable application of Hicks v.
Oklahoma, 447 U.S. 343 (1980), or any other Supreme Court opinion cited by
Jones. Therefore, I would affirm the district court.
Instead of applying AEDPA, the majority reaches the merits of Jones’s
Fourteenth Amendment due process claim. Maj. Disp. at 2. It first holds that there
was no breach of section 1111 of the California Penal Code at trial (because the
state court expressly held as much) and then concludes de novo that Jones was
therefore not deprived of his constitutional due process rights. Maj. Disp. at 2.
This is incorrect: instead of reaching the merits, the majority should have deferred
to the state court’s presumed rejection of Jones’s due process claim under AEDPA.
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See Johnson, 133 S. Ct. at 1096; see also 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d). Laboa v. Calderon,
on which the majority relies, is not to the contrary. 224 F.3d 972 (9th Cir. 2000).
There we merely held that because accomplice testimony adduced at trial was
sufficiently corroborated, the erroneous admission of hearsay testimony did not
have a “substantial and injurious” effect on the jury’s verdict. Id. at 979.
For that reason, I concur only in the result.
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