Molina v. Jones

Background

Molina was tried in California in 2018 on ten sexual-offense counts involving a child identified as R.D. The jury convicted him of the charged offenses, including offenses involving sexual intercourse, sexual penetration, lewd or lascivious acts, attempted sexual penetration, and continuous sexual abuse. The jury also found true allegations of substantial sexual conduct.

At trial, R.D.’s recorded statements described several incidents of sexual abuse, but R.D. later told a police investigator that some statements were untrue. At trial, R.D. testified that Molina had not touched her improperly and that the earlier incidents had not happened. The prosecution and defense presented expert testimony about child sexual abuse accommodation syndrome, including testimony about how children who report abuse may behave. The trial court gave a modified version of California jury instruction CALCRIM No. 1193, allowing the jury to consider the syndrome evidence when evaluating whether R.D.’s conduct was inconsistent with the conduct of someone who had been molested and when evaluating her credibility.

Molina challenged his conviction in the California courts. After the California Supreme Court denied review, he filed this federal petition on May 8, 2023. The respondent did not dispute that his three claims were timely and had been presented to the state courts. Molina later sought to add two claims, but the court found those proposed claims untimely and futile.

Claims

Molina raised three constitutional claims:

Legal standard

The court applied the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, a federal law that sharply limits federal habeas relief when a state court has already decided a claim on its merits. Under that law, relief generally requires showing that the state court decision contradicted or unreasonably applied clearly established United States Supreme Court law, or rested on an unreasonable determination of the facts. State-court factual findings are presumed correct unless rebutted with clear and convincing evidence.

Expert testimony

The California Court of Appeal had upheld the admission of the syndrome testimony under California evidence law. The federal court held that the United States Supreme Court had not established clear rules identifying when admission of allegedly prejudicial evidence becomes a due-process violation. Because federal habeas relief under the governing statute requires clearly established Supreme Court law, criticisms of syndrome evidence from other state courts were insufficient.

The court also rejected Molina’s argument that the state court had overlooked his federal claim. It concluded that the state court’s analysis under California Evidence Code section 352 reached the substance of the claim because that state-law test and the federal due-process standard both address whether evidence is unfairly prejudicial. The court therefore held that the admission of the expert testimony was not contrary to, or an unreasonable application of, clearly established federal law.

Jury instruction

The court was bound by the California Court of Appeal’s determination that CALCRIM No. 1193 correctly stated California law. It held that this alone supported denying Molina’s challenge to the instruction.

The court also considered the federal due-process question. It explained that an instructional error warrants habeas relief only when it infects the entire trial so seriously that the conviction violates due process. The relevant question was whether there was a reasonable likelihood that the jury applied the instruction in a way that relieved the prosecution of proving every element beyond a reasonable doubt.

The court found no such likelihood. The trial judge separately instructed the jury on evaluating expert testimony and on considering evidence admitted for a limited purpose. The federal court presumed that the jury followed those instructions. It concluded that the instruction allowed the jury to use the expert testimony only for evaluating another witness’s reliability and did not create or suggest any presumption about the prosecution’s burden of proof. The state court’s decision therefore was not contrary to, or an unreasonable application of, federal law.

R.D.’s recorded statements

The California Court of Appeal had upheld admission of R.D.’s recorded statements against Molina’s Confrontation Clause and false-testimony challenges. The federal court agreed that the Confrontation Clause does not bar prior statements by a witness who testifies at trial and is available for cross-examination about those statements. R.D. testified and was extensively questioned about her earlier recorded statements, so the court rejected this claim.

The court separately addressed Molina’s argument that the prosecution knowingly presented false testimony. It recognized that the Due Process Clause prohibits prosecutors from knowingly using false evidence. But it found no prejudice here because admission of R.D.’s recorded statements did not depend on the allegedly false trial testimony; the statements were admissible because R.D. testified at trial. The court therefore rejected this claim as well.

Disposition

Judge Charles R. Breyer denied Molina’s petition for a writ of habeas corpus. The court declined to issue a certificate of availability on any of Molina’s claims.