Constitutional

The Ninth Circuit held that AEDPA deference barred habeas relief because no Supreme Court case clearly prohibited the midtrial juror removal at issue.

United States v. Vargas: Knowing appeal waiver forecloses sentencing challenge.

The First District reversed the denial of Gary Owens’s new-trial motion because Juror No. 7 intentionally concealed his biological mother’s shooting death and withheld his unsettling contacts with Owens’s only defense witness, leaving a substantial likelihood of actual bias that the prosecution did

California’s Second District Court of Appeal reversed Julia Mildenberger’s misdemeanor conviction concerning eight puppies because the evidence did not show she left them in dangerous conditions overnight, but affirmed her conviction concerning outdoor cats, upheld the dependent-support

The Fourth District Court of Appeal denied Travis Sterling Merritt’s petition for rehearing and modified its opinion to state that his first strike offenses for four counts of robbery were committed when he was 17 years old, while expressly stating that the modifications do not effect a change

The Court of Appeal affirmed Hayes’s convictions but vacated his 50-years-to-life third-strike sentence and remanded for full resentencing because aggravated battery by gassing was not a serious or violent felony and no jury finding supported treating it as one.

The Fourth District Court of Appeal, Division One, affirmed Aaron Jahrootz Steele’s convictions arising from a shopping-center confrontation, rejected his severance and due-process challenges, and left reversal of a separate threat conviction and any retrial or resentencing to a concurrently i

The Court of Appeal vacated Steele’s count 6 conviction because his lawyer unreasonably failed to request a mistake-of-fact instruction supported by substantial evidence, while denying his Racial Justice Act claim without prejudice to refiling in superior court.