United States of America v. William Clark Turner

NOT FOR PUBLICATION
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff-Appellee,
v.
WILLIAM CLARK TURNER,
Defendant-Appellant.
No. 21-16957
D.C. No.
1:16-cr-00207-SOM-1
MEMORANDUM*
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the District of Hawaii
Susan O. Mollway, District Judge, Presiding
Submitted June 8, 2023**
Honolulu, Hawaii
Before: BADE, BUMATAY, and SANCHEZ, Circuit Judges.
William Turner appeals the district court’s denial of his petition for a writ of
error coram nobis. We have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291. We review the
district court’s decision de novo, United States v. Riedl, 496 F.3d 1003, 1005 (9th
Cir. 2007), and its factual findings for clear error, Lankford v. Arave, 468 F.3d 578,
* This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent
except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3.
** The panel unanimously concludes this case is suitable for decision
without oral argument. See Fed. R. App. P. 34(a)(2).
FILED
JUN 14 2023
MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK
U.S. COURT OF APPEALS

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583 (9th Cir. 2006). We affirm.
A jury convicted Turner of interfering with a flight attendant in violation of
49 U.S.C. § 46504. Turner now seeks to nullify his conviction through a writ of
error coram nobis, arguing that his trial counsel provided ineffective assistance by
failing to object to a purportedly unlawful jury instruction.1
We reject Turner’s ineffective-assistance-of-counsel claim. To succeed on a
claim for ineffective assistance, a defendant must show that his counsel’s “acts or
omissions were outside the wide range of professionally competent assistance.”
Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668, 690 (1984). The jury instruction at issue
was based on an applicable pattern instruction from the Eleventh Circuit, which by
that time had been in use for over a decade. Although Turner contends the pattern
instruction was “incorrect on its face,” he cites no court decision holding as much.
Considering the “strong presumption . . . of reasonable professional assistance,” we
conclude that Turner’s counsel did not perform ineffectively by consenting to that
instruction. Id. at 689.
AFFIRMED.
1 We do not address Turner’s argument that the jury instruction unlawfully
expanded the scope of the statute. As we held in Turner’s previous appeal, Turner
waived any challenge to the jury instruction under the invited-error doctrine. See
United States v. Turner, 754 F. App’x 664, 664 (9th Cir. 2019).

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