United States Ninth Circuit

In a burglary prosecution, a grant of petitioner's habeas petition is affirmed where a state court's approval of the trial court's instruction, directing the jurors to the evidence the judge believed supported conviction, crossed the boundary from appropriate encouragement to exercise the duty to deliberate in order to reach a unanimous verdict, and went into the forbidden territory of coercing a particular verdict on the basis of the judge's selective view of the evidence.

Appellate Information

• Argued 12/10/2008
• Decided 09/08/2009
• Published 09/08/2009

Judges

• Before: MARY M. SCHROEDER, MARSHA S. BERZON and N. RANDY SMITH, Circuit Judges.

Court

• United States Ninth Circuit

Counsel

• For Appellees:
  
• David M. Porter, FD, Sacramento, CA, for petitioner/appellee/appellant, Anthony Bernard Smith, Jr., David A. Eldridge, DOJ, Sacramento, CA, for respondents/appellants/appellees, B. Curry and Bill Lockyer.