Thursday, April 30, 2026
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Ninth Circuit:
Habeas Relief Wrongly Granted to Man Who Set Lady on Fire
Opinion Says District Court Judge Erred in Accusing California High Court of Acting Unreasonably in Rejecting Ineffective Assistance Claims of Convict Who Admitted to 1986 Rape, Assault That Led to Victim’s Death
By Kimber Cooley, associate editor
The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals yesterday reversed an order vacating the conviction and death sentence of a California man who admitted to raping a woman before setting her on fire, saying that District Court Judge Otis D. Wright II of the Central District of California wrongly found that the California Supreme Court acted unreasonably in rejecting the defendant’s ineffective assistance of counsel claims in his state-court habeas corpus petition.
Seeking federal habeas relief was James Robert Scott, who confessed to police that he committed the April 1986 assault on his neighbor, Wanda Jensen. Despite suffering burns that covered one-third of her body, Jensen lived for ten months in intensive care before dying from pneumonia and other infections.
After his court-appointed attorney, William A. Clark (now deceased), encouraged Scott to waive his right to a jury and focused primarily on evidence purportedly showing that Jensen’s death was caused by medical negligence, a judge found him guilty and sentenced him to death. Scott filed petitions for habeas corpus relief in the state court, arguing ineffective assistance of counsel.
On Jan. 27, 2003, the high court rejected his claims, and Scott filed a request for relief in federal court in 2004.
After an extended period of discovery and other delays, Wright granted Scott’s petition in December 2021, finding that the Supreme Court had acted unreasonably in denying Scott’s claims of deficient performance and saying that the “cumulative impact of [Clark’s] multiple deficiencies,” including focusing on the defense of intervening causation and recommending a waiver of his jury trial rights, resulted in prejudice to the defendant.
Deference Required
Yesterday’s opinion, written by Circuit Judge Jacqueline H. Nguyen and joined in by Circuit Judges Bridget Shelton Bade as well as Ryan D. Nelson, vacates the grant of relief. Nguyen declared:
“Applying deference to the state court’s factual findings,…we conclude that Scott’s [ineffective assistance of counsel] claim fails. The California Supreme Court reasonably determined that trial counsel’s performance was not deficient in most respects and that any errors did not prejudice Scott. We therefore vacate the district court’s grant of Scott’s petition and remand for the district court to consider Scott’s remaining claims….”
Nelson penned a concurring opinion, saying:
“Congress demands that federal courts give more deference to state court judgments. The district court ignored overwhelming evidence establishing Scott’s guilt and substituted its own view of the trial record for the state court’s—thirty-nine years after the fact. I write separately to explain why cumulative prejudice is never an appropriate basis to grant habeas relief to a state prisoner who asserts ineffective assistance of counsel.”
Special Circumstances Murder
Scott pled guilty to rape and attempted murder at his arraignment on June 24, 1986, as well as to a similar crime against another victim, and he was sentenced to 42 years in prison. Approximately one year later, he was charged with special circumstances murder due to Jensen’s death.
Clark was appointed to represent him, and the lawyer encouraged his client to waive his right to a jury trial, purportedly due to a belief that a trial in front of then- Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Margaret Grignon (now a retired justice from this district) would be more favorable to his client than one involving panelists from the conservative-leaning Antelope Valley area.
In 1989, Grignon found him guilty and sentenced him to death, finding that any medical negligence was only a contributing cause of the victim’s death and did not relieve Scott of responsibility. The high court affirmed on direct appeal in 1997.
Limited Relief
Nguyen noted that the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (“AEDPA”) applies to federal habeas petitions filed after April 24, 1996, and relief is only appropriate under the statutory scheme if the state court’s denial of the claim involved an unreasonable application of clearly established federal law as determined by the U.S. Supreme Court or an irrational determination as to the underlying facts.
Pointing out that a defendant must show that a lawyer’s representation fell below an objective standard and that the asserted deficiencies caused him prejudice, the jurist rejected Scott’s claim that Clark was negligent in not pursuing a mental state defense.
Saying that, “[l]ike the California Supreme Court, we need not decide whether Clark’s decisions related to a possible mental defense amounted to deficient performance,” she opined that “the state court reasonably concluded that any deficient performance did not result in prejudice” in light of the defendant’s confession and the intentional nature of the assault. She wrote:
“[T]he evidence at trial showed Scott’s voluntary intoxication on the night of the attack on Jensen and Clark relied on this evidence in arguing that Scott lacked the ability to ‘formulate the intent to kill’….Judge Grignon was unpersuaded and found that Scott had the intent to kill based on the nature of his attack on Jensen and his confessions to the deputies. Scott does not explain how additional evidence of his drug use or mental health background would have altered the outcome of the trial.”
Medical Malpractice Defense
As to Wright’s assertion that Clark was deficient in asserting medical malpractice when the defense was “untenable” and “wholly inept,” Nguyen responded by saying that, “as the state court reasonably explained, the evidence of malpractice was strong,” “Scott did not have a more compelling alternative defense,” and the evidence had a “spillover effect” at the penalty phase, where Clark argued the evidence was at least mitigating.
Addressing the jury-right waiver, the jurist remarked:
“Clark’s reluctance to place Scott’s ‘cross-racial’ sexual assault history in front of Antelope Valley jurors was likely supported by his firsthand experience with racial bias during his previous trial….Accordingly, the state court’s finding that Clark’s advice was based on ‘valid tactical reasons’ was not unreasonable.”
Acknowledging that Wright’s decision was based on a finding of cumulative prejudice, Nguyen commented:
“[W]e conclude that the California Supreme Court reasonably determined that counsel’s performance was not deficient with the exception of trial counsel’s failure to present a mental state defense, which the state court reasonably denied on the ground that Scott failed to show prejudice. As such, the state court could have reasonably found no cumulative prejudice…. Accordingly, the district court erred in granting relief.”
Nelson’s View
Arguing that “habeas is never appropriate when a state court rejects a Sixth Amendment claim that relies on a theory of cumulative prejudice,” Nelson wrote:
“Under [U.S.] Supreme Court precedent, the Sixth Amendment is violated when state-provided counsel commits an unreasonable error that likely affects the outcome of trial….But the Supreme Court ‘has never explicitly addressed’ whether counsel violates the Sixth Amendment by committing a series of small errors that, while not individually prejudicial, could have impacted the outcome of the trial in the aggregate.”
Saying that “since the Supreme Court has never endorsed cumulative prejudice, a state court cannot ‘unreasonably apply’ or act ‘contrary to’ Court precedent by denying a cumulative prejudice claim,” he noted that “[t]he Sixth and Eighth Circuits reached this conclusion long ago” and that “[b]oth the Fifth and the Eleventh Circuits have suggested in unpublished opinions that they would follow suit.”
Grasping at Straws
Adding that “Scott grasps at straws” by pointing to U.S. Supreme Court language referring to “errors” that affected the outcome of the trial in the 1984 case of Strickland v. Washington, he argued:
“Scott takes the plural as an implicit endorsement of cumulative prejudice. But Strickland never discussed cumulative prejudice. Nor did it suggest that anything of substance—let alone an entire prejudice doctrine—hinged on the plural form of ‘errors.’ We cannot take the Court’s unexplained decision to use the plural as an implicit endorsement of an otherwise undiscussed doctrine….If the Supreme Court’s dicta is not enough for habeas, the Court’s unexplained grammar isn’t, either.”
Acknowledging that, “[u]nlike the Supreme Court, we have incorporated cumulative prejudice into the Sixth Amendment analysis,” he declared that “[w]hile we may apply our cumulative prejudice doctrine on direct review of federal criminal trials, we cannot apply the doctrine when reviewing state trials through habeas.” He argued:
“[I]n a future case, we should clarify that petitioners cannot rely on cumulative prejudice to secure habeas relief on a Sixth Amendment claim. And if our panels continue to unwittingly apply cumulative prejudice on habeas review, we should take those cases en banc….A state court never acts ‘contrary to’ or ‘unreasonably appl[ies]’ Court precedent by rejecting an ineffective-assistance claim that relies on cumulative prejudice.”
The case is Scott v. Broomfield, 22-99000.
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