Opinion
No. 11-56480
01-13-2015
MARK WAYNE HAUSEUR, Petitioner - Appellant, v. TIM V. VIRGA, Warden, Respondent - Appellee.
NOT FOR PUBLICATION
D.C. No. 5:08-cv-00094-CJC-SS MEMORANDUM Appeal from the United States District Court for the Central District of California
Cormac J. Carney, District Judge, Presiding
Argued and Submitted January 5, 2015 Pasadena, California Before: KOZINSKI, W. FLETCHER, and OWENS, Circuit Judges.
This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent except as provided by 9th Cir. R. 36-3.
California state prisoner Mark Wayne Hauseur appeals the denial of his 28 U.S.C. § 2254 habeas petition. We have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 2253. We review de novo the district court's decision to deny Hauseur's habeas petition, see Clabourne v. Ryan, 745 F.3d 362, 370 (9th Cir. 2014), and we affirm.
Hauseur was convicted of first-degree murder in 2004. He argues that various irregularities compromised the integrity of the jury. We assume without deciding that these arguments are properly before us, and that our review is de novo. On the record presented, neither the statements made by the victim's wife nor one juror's alleged conversation with a police officer were the kind of extrinsic material likely to have "substantially and injuriously affected the verdict." Cook v. LaMarque, 593 F.3d 810, 827 (9th Cir. 2010) (internal punctuation marks omitted). Any relationship that another juror may have had with a prosecution witness was, similarly, too insubstantial to have rendered that juror incapable of "decid[ing] the case solely on the evidence before [him]." McDonough Power Equip., Inc. v. Greenwood, 464 U.S. 548, 554 (1984) (quoting Smith v. Phillips, 455 U.S. 209, 217 (1982)). The district court did not err in rejecting these claims. Nor did it abuse its discretion in denying an evidentiary hearing.
Hauseur also argues that he received ineffective assistance of trial counsel. Because the state court adjudicated Hauseur's ineffective assistance claim on the merits, we can grant relief only if its adjudication was "contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of," clearly established Supreme Court law. 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1). We conclude it was neither. The fact that the state court did not cite to or fully articulate the standard of Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668, 694 (1984), does not mean it applied a standard "contrary to" Strickland's. See Woodford v. Visciotti, 537 U.S. 19, 24 (2002) (per curiam). And its conclusion that Hauseur was not prejudiced by any deficiencies in his counsel's performance was not "unreasonable" given the strength of the state's evidence against Hauseur.
AFFIRMED.