United States Ninth Circuit

In habeas proceedings arising after petitioners were jointly convicted of murder, attempted murder, robbery and burglary, denial of habeas relief is affirmed over claims that: 1) they received ineffective assistance of counsel at trial in violation of Strickland; 2) the prosecution suppressed exculpatory evidence at trial in violation of Brady; 3) trial counsel failed to engage in "meaningful adversarial testing" in violation of Cronic; and 4) the trial court violated one petitioner's Eighth Amendment right to a jury trial and Fourteenth Amendment right to due process by providing an incorrect or inaccurate answer to a question of law posed by the jury to the trial court.

Appellate Information

• Argued 10/15/2007
• Decided 04/09/2008
• Published 04/09/2008

Judges

• BEEZER, Circuit Judge:, Before:  ROBERT R. BEEZER, STEPHEN S. TROTT, and N. RANDY SMITH, Circuit Judges.

Court

• United States Ninth Circuit

Counsel

• For Appellant:
  
• Cliff Gardner, Oakland, CA, for petitioner-appellant Joshua Richter., Ann C. McClintock, Assistant Federal Defender, Sacramento, CA, for petitioner-appellant Christian Branscombe.


• For Appellees:
  
• Harry Joseph Colombo, Deputy Attorney General, and John G. McLean, Supervising Deputy Attorney General, Sacramento, CA, for the respondents-appellees.