Patino v. Koenig

Background

Oscar Gilberto Patino sought a federal writ of habeas corpus, a court order challenging unlawful custody under a state-court judgment. In 2015, a jury in San Mateo County Superior Court convicted him of eight counts of committing lewd or lascivious acts on a child under fourteen and two additional counts. He received a sentence of 60 years to life in prison. His efforts to overturn the convictions in state court were unsuccessful.

The prosecution presented testimony from Miriam Wolf, a forensic interviewer and expert on Child Sexual Abuse Accommodation Syndrome (CSAAS). The opinion describes CSAAS as an explanation for emotional and behavioral patterns that may cause sexually abused children to delay or inconsistently disclose abuse. Wolf testified about CSAAS generally and said it could not determine whether a particular person had been molested. The trial court instructed the jury that the testimony was not evidence that Patino committed any charged crime and could be considered only in evaluating whether a complaining witness’s conduct was consistent with that of someone who had been molested.

First Claim: CSAAS Testimony

Patino argued that admitting Wolf’s testimony violated his Fourteenth Amendment right to a fair trial. The California Court of Appeal held that Patino had not preserved that constitutional objection because he did not make the same specific objection at trial. The federal court found that California’s contemporaneous-objection rule was independent of federal law and adequate to support the state court’s decision. Because Patino did not show cause and prejudice or a fundamental miscarriage of justice, the federal court held that the claim was procedurally defaulted.

The federal court also considered the state appellate court’s alternative decision rejecting the claim on the merits. Under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, or AEDPA, a federal court generally may not grant relief unless the state court’s decision was contrary to, or an unreasonable application of, clearly established United States Supreme Court law, or was based on an unreasonable determination of the facts.

The court held that the state court reasonably rejected Patino’s due-process challenge. It relied on Ninth Circuit authority permitting general CSAAS testimony when it does not state that a particular child is truthful. The court concluded that Wolf’s testimony and the jury instructions allowed a permissible inference that the children could remain credible despite delayed reporting. The court therefore held that Patino was not entitled to relief on this claim.

Second Claim: Ineffective Assistance of Counsel

Patino alternatively argued that his trial lawyer was ineffective for failing to preserve the constitutional objection to the CSAAS testimony. The court found that Patino had not fairly presented the factual and legal basis of this ineffective-assistance claim to the California Supreme Court, so the claim was unexhausted. Exhaustion generally requires giving the state courts one complete opportunity to resolve a federal constitutional claim.

Although a federal court may deny an unexhausted claim on the merits, the court explained that it may do so only when the claim is plainly not a potentially valid federal claim. Applying the standard for ineffective assistance of counsel, which requires deficient performance and resulting prejudice, the court concluded that Patino’s claim was not even potentially valid because the underlying challenge to the CSAAS testimony lacked merit. The court therefore denied the ineffective-assistance claim.

Disposition

The court denied Patino’s petition for a writ of habeas corpus. It also ruled that a certificate of appealability would not issue, while stating that Patino could seek such a certificate from the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. The Clerk was directed to enter judgment for Craig Koenig and close the file.