Greg Chao v. D. Neven ( 2023 )

NOT FOR PUBLICATION FILED
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS JAN 25 2023
MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK
U.S. COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT
GREG TAKUNG CHAO, No. 21-16803
Petitioner-Appellant, D.C. No.
2:14-cv-02039-GMN-EJY
v.
D. W. NEVEN; ATTORNEY GENERAL MEMORANDUM*
FOR THE STATE OF NEVADA,
Respondents-Appellees.
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the District of Nevada
Gloria M. Navarro, District Judge, Presiding
Argued and Submitted December 8, 2022
San Francisco, California
Before: GRABER and WATFORD, Circuit Judges, and BATAILLON,** District
Judge.
Dissent by Judge BATAILLON.
A Nevada jury convicted Petitioner Greg Chao of robbery with the use of a
deadly weapon and first-degree murder with the use of a deadly weapon. The
*
This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent
except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3.
**
The Honorable Joseph F. Bataillon, United States District Judge for
the District of Nebraska, sitting by designation.
prosecution presented two theories of first-degree murder: premeditated murder
and felony murder predicated on robbery. The state trial court failed to instruct the
jury that, under Nevada law, “afterthought robbery” cannot serve as a valid
predicate offense to felony murder. That was reversible error, but the Nevada
Supreme Court held that the instructional error was harmless because a rational
jury, if properly instructed, would have found Petitioner guilty of willful,
premeditated, and deliberate murder.
The district court denied Petitioner’s habeas petition, and Petitioner timely
seeks our review. Our standard of review is highly deferential. Petitioner must
show that the flaw in the instructions had a “substantial and injurious effect” on the
jury’s verdict, Brecht v. Abrahamson, 507 U.S. 619, 623 (1993) (citation and
internal quotation marks omitted), and that the state court’s decision meets the
standard established by the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996
(AEDPA), Brown v. Davenport, 142 S. Ct. 1510, 1520 (2022). We affirm.1
1. Petitioner first argues that the Nevada Supreme Court applied an
incorrect standard of review by asking only whether sufficient evidence supported
the murder conviction. We disagree with Petitioner’s reading of the opinion. The
1
We decline to expand the certificate of appealability to include the question
whether the trial court violated Petitioner’s Fifth Amendment right not to
incriminate himself when it admitted statements made by Petitioner during his
Canadian extradition proceedings.
2
Nevada Supreme Court reviewed whether the instructional error was “harmless
beyond a reasonable doubt,” citing its earlier opinion in Cortinas v. State, 195 P.3d
315, 324 (Nev. 2008). Chao v. State, No. 50336, 2010 WL 3270900, at *4 (Nev.
June 23, 2010); see also Cortinas v. Nevada, 859 F. App’x 159, 160 (9th Cir. 2021)
(unpublished), cert. denied, 142 S. Ct. 799 (2022) (holding that the Nevada
Supreme Court applied the correct harmlessness standard to the same instructional
error as in this case).
In Cortinas and, by incorporation, here, the Nevada Supreme Court properly
relied on Chapman v. California, 386 U.S. 18 (1967), and Neder v. United States,
527 U.S. 1 (1999), for the harmlessness standard on direct review. See Hedgpeth
v. Pulido, 555 U.S. 57, 60–61 (2008) (per curiam) (holding that when a jury is
instructed on multiple theories of guilt, one of which is improper, courts should
conduct the same harmless-error analysis that applies to other forms of
instructional error). Accordingly, the decision in the present case is not “contrary
to” Supreme Court precedent. 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1).
2. Petitioner also argues that the Nevada Supreme Court’s decision involved
an “unreasonable application” of the law, id., or an “unreasonable determination of
the facts,” id. § 2254(d)(2), because a properly instructed jury would not have
found Petitioner guilty of willful, deliberate, and premeditated murder. “The
question under AEDPA is not whether a federal court believes the state court’s
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determination was incorrect but whether that determination was unreasonable—a
substantially higher threshold.” Schriro v. Landrigan, 550 U.S. 465, 473 (2007).
In other words, if “‘fairminded jurists could disagree’ on the correctness of the
state court’s decision,” the AEDPA standard is not met. Harrington v. Richter, 562
U.S. 86, 101 (2011) (citation omitted). Under that strict standard of review, we
hold that the Nevada Supreme Court was not unreasonable to conclude that the
instructional error was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.
Under Nevada law, “[w]illfulness is the intent to kill”; deliberation may be
brief so long as the defendant does not act on a “mere unconsidered and rash
impulse”; and premeditation is “a determination to kill[] distinctly formed in the
mind,” but it “may be as instantaneous as successive thoughts.” Byford v. State,
994 P.2d 700, 714 (Nev. 2000). Circumstantial evidence may support findings of
both deliberation and premeditation. Leonard v. State, 17 P.3d 397, 411 (Nev.
2001).
The Nevada Supreme Court permissibly ruled that a properly instructed jury
would have found all those elements. Petitioner bludgeoned the victim in the head
at least a dozen times with enormous force, causing many horrific injuries. The
number and intensity of the blows suggests that Petitioner acted with willfulness,
premeditation, and deliberation. See DePasquale v. State, 803 P.2d 218, 221 (Nev.
1990) (per curiam) (holding that the nature and extent of the victim’s injuries,
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along with repeated blows, sufficed to prove willfulness, premeditation, and
deliberation under Nevada law). Unlike in Chambers v. McDaniel, 549 F.3d 1191(9th Cir. 2008), there is no evidence to support a rational jury’s finding that
Petitioner failed to form the requisite state of mind due to intoxication or that the
murder was committed “in the throes of a heated argument” between the killer and
the victim. 549 F.3d at 1201.
AFFIRMED.
5
FILED
Chao v. Neven, No. 21-16803 JAN 25 2023
MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK
BATAILLON, District Judge, dissenting: U.S. COURT OF APPEALS
I respectfully dissent. The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of
1996 undoubtedly imposes a high bar for habeas corpus relief. Reasonable
decisions, or at least those about which “fairminded jurists could disagree,” must
stand. Harrington v. Richter, 562 U.S. 86, 101 (2011); Schriro v. Landrigan, 550
U.S. 465, 473 (2007). But this jurist finds the Nevada Supreme Court’s majority
opinion unreasonable and contrary to clearly established federal law.
The prosecution asserts that Greg Chao beat a man to death on the 18th floor
of the Imperial Palace, Las Vegas, and left the body propped against the door to the
fire escape. Following a first hung jury, a second convicted Mr. Chao of robbery
and first-degree murder. The general murder verdict comprised any—and forever
unknown—combination of votes on the underlying theories, either classic willful,
premeditated, and deliberate or felony murder. And the felony murder instruction
encompassed (over Mr. Chao’s objection) post-mortem robbery as predicate, a
theory Nevada law rejects. Nay v. State, 167 P.3d 430, 435 (Nev. 2007).
Presented with a verdict of compromised unanimity, and therefore validity,
Stromberg v. People of State of Cal., 283 U.S. 359 (1931), the Nevada Supreme
Court may nonetheless have found the error harmless, Hedgpeth v. Pulido, 555 U.S.
57 (2008), “beyond a reasonable doubt,” Davis v. Ayala, 576 U.S. 257, 267 (2015);
1
Chapman v. California, 386 U.S. 18 (1967). However, the Sixth Amendment’s
guarantee that a jury, not a court, determine each and every element of an offense
curbs that review. Apprendi v. New Jersey, 530 U.S. 466, 477 (2000); Sullivan v.
Louisiana, 508 U.S. 275, 279–80 (1993). Thus, a court’s determination of an
element not decided by the jury requires an “uncontested” record of “overwhelming
evidence”—under the careful admonition that “[i]f, at the end of that examination,
the court cannot conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that the jury verdict would
have been the same absent the error—for example, where the defendant contested
the omitted element and raised evidence sufficient to support a contrary finding—it
should not find the error harmless.” Neder v. United States, 527 U.S. 1, 16–17, 19
(1999) (emphasis added).
Here, the Nevada Supreme Court found that “there [was] sufficient
evidence”—not overwhelming and uncontested—“to indicate that a rational jury, if
properly instructed, would have found [Mr.] Chao guilty of willful, premeditated,
and deliberate murder.” The majority, with reference to earlier Nevada decisions,
Cortinas v. State, 195 P.3d 315, 324 (Nev. 2008), and similarly non-binding
decisions of this Court, Cortinas v. Nevada, 859 F. App’x 159, 160 (9th Cir. 2021),
finds this conclusion satisfactory.
By resting on “sufficient” evidence to supply the requisite elements of willful,
premeditated, and deliberate murder, the Nevada Supreme Court undermines the
2
Sixth Amendment and the plain language of Neder, the case on which it primarily
relies before us. 527 U.S. at 17.
We need not speculate prejudice. Free of the instant error, the first jury hung
with substantially the same evidence. Brecht v. Abrahamson, 507 U.S. 619 (1993).
The Nevada Supreme Court contravened federal law, propounded by the United
States Supreme Court, beyond the reasonable disagreement of fairminded jurists.
Brown v. Davenport, 212 L. Ed. 2d 463 (Apr. 21, 2022); Davis, 576 U.S. at 269–70.
I dissent.
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