Wu v. Arnold

Background

Jing Hua Wu, a California state prisoner proceeding without a lawyer, sought federal relief under 28 U.S.C. § 2254 from convictions for three first-degree murders. A jury also found firearm-use and multiple-murder sentencing enhancements true and found Wu legally sane. After the case was stayed so Wu could exhaust additional claims in state court, he filed the amended petition at issue.

The amended petition raised nine groups of claims: faulty jury instructions concerning provocation and heat of passion; improper administration and admission of results from a Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-II personality test; improper closing comments by the prosecutor during the sanity phase; unreasonable factual determinations; jury misconduct; presentation of false evidence; ineffective assistance of trial counsel; ineffective assistance of appellate counsel; and cumulative error.

Legal standard

Under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, a federal court generally may grant relief only if 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 also applied de novo review to the prosecutor-comments claim because the state appellate court had rejected that claim on procedural grounds rather than on its merits.

Court’s analysis

Jury instructions

The court held that the instructions, considered as a whole, adequately explained California law. The instructions allowed the jury to reduce first-degree murder to second-degree murder based on provocation that negated premeditation or lying in wait. The objectively reasonable provocation requirement was expressly tied to voluntary manslaughter, not second-degree murder. The court therefore found no due-process violation.

Personality test

Wu argued that the trial court violated California law by allowing a prosecution expert to administer the personality test without first finding that it had a reasonable relationship to Wu’s mental state. The court explained that a state-law violation alone cannot support federal habeas relief. It also found no clearly established Supreme Court rule making administration of the test or admission of its results a due-process violation. The court rejected Wu’s argument that the state court had made an unreasonable factual determination because the required reasonableness judgment was a legal conclusion, not a historical factual finding subject to review under § 2254(d)(2).

Prosecutor’s closing comments

Wu challenged comments describing state hospitals as “cushy,” suggesting that he had a motive to claim mental illness, and calling an insanity finding “a slap in the face to justice.” The court held that the comments were brief and isolated, were a small part of a lengthy closing argument, and had little impact in light of the evidence supporting the finding that Wu was legally sane. The trial court also instructed the jury not to consider the consequences of an insanity finding and that lawyers’ comments were not evidence. The court concluded that the comments did not make the trial fundamentally unfair or have the required prejudicial effect.

Alleged unreasonable factual determinations

The court struck from the amended petition the claim concerning allegedly false statements by Dr. Hughey because Wu had not fairly presented that claim to the California Supreme Court or another state appellate court. The court stated that, after exhausting the claim, Wu could seek to bring it in a new federal petition. The court separately rejected the factual-determination challenge concerning the personality test for the reasons discussed above.

Jury misconduct

Wu argued that two jurors had prejudged the case and influenced other jurors. After a hearing, the state trial court found that the alleged statements either were not made outside deliberations or had been mistakenly recalled by another juror. The federal court held that those factual findings were entitled to a presumption of correctness and had not been rebutted. It also rejected Wu’s objections to the hearing, finding that the trial court adequately investigated alleged misconduct while properly limiting inquiry into the internal processes of jury deliberations.

Alleged false evidence

The court rejected Wu’s claims that the prosecution presented false testimony, altered crime-scene photographs or a transcript, doctored personality-test answers, and misrepresented the timing of phone calls. The record showed that one expert corrected an inaccurate statement during testimony, and Wu offered insufficient evidence that other evidence was false or that the prosecutor knew it was false. The court held that the state courts correctly rejected this due-process claim.

Ineffective assistance of trial counsel

Applying the two-part test from Strickland v. Washington, which requires deficient performance and resulting prejudice, the court found that Wu had not shown either an unreasonable act by counsel or a reasonable probability of a different result. The court specifically rejected complaints concerning the personality test, the prosecution expert, testimony from Hien Tram, and crime-scene photographs.

Ineffective assistance of appellate counsel and cumulative error

Because the underlying claims lacked merit, the court held that appellate counsel was not ineffective for failing to raise them. It also rejected the cumulative-error claim because Wu had not established constitutional errors to combine.

Disposition

The court denied the petition for a writ of habeas corpus. It also denied a certificate of appealability, stating that reasonable jurists would not find its assessment of the constitutional claims debatable or wrong. The clerk was directed to enter judgment for the respondent and close the file.