FILED
United States Court of Appeals
Tenth Circuit
January 18, 2012
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALSElisabeth A. Shumaker
Clerk of Court
TENTH CIRCUIT
JEFFERY LYNN SMITH,
Petitioner-Appellant, No. 11-8040
v. (D.C. No. 1:10-CV-00075-ABJ)
EDDIE WILSON, Warden, Wyoming (D. Wyoming)
State Penitentiary; ROBERT O.
LAMPERT, Director, Wyoming
Department of Corrections; BRUCE
SALZBURG, Attorney General, State of
Wyoming,
Respondents-Appellees.
ORDER DENYING CERTIFICATE OF APPEALABILITY*
Before O’BRIEN, McKAY, and TYMKOVICH, Circuit Judges.
Petitioner, a state prisoner proceeding pro se, seeks a certificate of appealability to
appeal the district court’s denial of his § 2254 habeas petition. In 2007, a Wyoming jury
found Petitioner guilty of murder. His conviction and sentence were affirmed on direct
appeal. See Smith v. State, 199 P.3d 1052 (Wyo. 2009). Petitioner then filed the instant
habeas petition, in which he claimed the state court erred in excluding his proffered
evidence of alternative suspects. The district court granted Respondents’ motion for
*
This order is not binding precedent except under the doctrines of law of the case,
res judicata, and collateral estoppel. It may be cited, however, for its persuasive value
consistent with Fed. R. App. P. 32.1 and 10th Cir. R. 32.1.
summary judgment, holding that the state court’s decision was not contrary to or an
unreasonable application of federal law. See 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d).
As the district court explained, a state court decision involves an unreasonable
application of federal law only if it is “objectively unreasonable,” meaning that “most
reasonable jurists exercising their independent judgment would conclude the state court
misapplied Supreme Court law.” Maynard v. Boone, 468 F.3d 665, 671 (10th Cir. 2006).
“It is not enough that the decision is clearly wrong or that the reviewing court would have
reached a contrary decision.” Id. Moreover, “[t]he more general the rule, the more
leeway courts have in reaching outcomes in case-by-case determinations.” Yarborough v.
Alvarado, 541 U.S. 652, 664 (2004).
In this case, the relevant Supreme Court law consisted of the general principles
that criminal defendants must be given a meaningful opportunity to present a complete
defense; that evidentiary rules excluding defense evidence may not be arbitrary or
disproportionate to the purposes they are designed to serve; and that alternative-suspect
evidence is admissible subject to well-established rules of evidence that “permit trial
judges to exclude evidence if its probative value is outweighed by certain other factors
such as unfair prejudice, confusion of the issues, or potential to mislead the jury.”
Holmes v. South Carolina, 547 U.S. 319, 326 (2006); see also Chambers v. Mississippi,
410 U.S. 284 (1973). The state trial court concluded Petitioner’s proffered evidence was
inadmissible under well-established rules of evidence, since some of it consisted of
uncorroborated hearsay and the probative value of the remaining evidence was
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substantially outweighed by the probability of confusing the issues and misleading the
jury. On appeal, the Wyoming Supreme Court agreed with this conclusion and
accordingly held that the exclusion of this evidence did not run afoul of the U.S. Supreme
Court’s holdings in Holmes and other cases. Smith, 199 P.3d at 1064-1067.
In light of the deference federal courts must apply to this type of state court
determination on habeas review, we conclude that reasonable jurists would not debate the
district court’s conclusion that this decision was not an unreasonable application of
federal law. See Slack v. McDaniel, 529 U.S. 473, 484 (2000). Therefore, for
substantially the same reasons given by the district court, we DENY Petitioner’s request
for a certificate of appealability and DISMISS the appeal.
ENTERED FOR THE COURT
Monroe G. McKay
Circuit Judge
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