Orozco v. Diaz

Background

Jesus L. Orozco, an inmate at the Correctional Training Facility in Soledad, filed this self-represented petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2254. A jury had found him guilty of six counts involving sexual assault and lewd conduct involving a child. The trial court sentenced him to a 24-year determinate term for Counts 3 through 6, a consecutive 15-years-to-life term for Count 1, and 10 days in jail for Count 2.

The clerk’s original indeterminate-term abstract of judgment mistakenly listed Counts 3 through 6 as the counts carrying the 15-years-to-life term. The determinate-term abstract correctly listed the consecutive six-year terms for Counts 3 through 6. The state court clerk later amended the indeterminate-term abstract to list Count 1, matching the sentence orally imposed at the 2003 sentencing hearing.

Orozco pursued the issue in state court and then filed this federal petition. He asserted two claims: that the abstract of judgment was still incorrect and that due process gave him a right to be present when the abstract was amended.

Governing standard

Under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, a federal court generally may grant relief from a state-court decision only if the state court’s decision contradicted or unreasonably applied clearly established United States Supreme Court law, or rested on an unreasonable determination of the facts. The federal court reviewed the last reasoned state-court decision concerning the abstract and applied this deferential standard.

Abstract-of-judgment claim

The court held that Orozco was not entitled to relief. To the extent he challenged the original abstract, the issue was moot because the mistake had already been corrected. To the extent he challenged the amended abstract, the court found that it accurately listed Count 1 as the offense carrying the 15-years-to-life term and accurately reflected the sentence orally imposed by the trial judge. Because the amendment corrected the written record without changing the underlying sentence, the court found that no relief was available.

Right-to-presence claim

The court also denied relief on Orozco’s claim that he had a due process right to be present during the correction. The court reasoned that correcting a clerical mistake in an abstract of judgment was a ministerial act, not a resentencing or a critical stage of the criminal proceeding. The correction did not change the offense of conviction or the sentence imposed.

The court further noted that Orozco identified no United States Supreme Court decision establishing a right to be present during this type of clerical correction, and the court found no such decision. It concluded that the California Supreme Court reasonably could have rejected the claim under the federal habeas standard. The court also found that Orozco’s reliance on Diaz v. United States was misplaced because that case concerned a defendant’s absence during trial proceedings and the pronouncement of judgment, not correction of a clerical error in an abstract of judgment.

Disposition

The court denied the petition for a writ of habeas corpus. It also denied a certificate of appealability, finding that reasonable jurists would not debate whether the court’s assessment of the constitutional claims was wrong.