Stanfield v. Clement

• Court: Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
• Decided: April 22, 2026
• Docket: 25-2607
• Status: Unpublished

Opinion

NOT FOR PUBLICATION FILED UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS APR 22 2026 MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK U.S. COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

KATHERINE LEA STANFIELD, No. 25-2607 D.C. No. Petitioner - Appellant, 4:22-cv-00057-REP v. MEMORANDUM*

JANELL CLEMENT, Warden,

Respondent - Appellee.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Idaho Raymond Edward Patricco, Jr., Magistrate Judge, Presiding

Submitted April 14, 2026** Portland, Oregon

Before: OWENS, VANDYKE, and SUNG, Circuit Judges.

Petitioner-Appellant Katherine Lea Stanfield appeals the district court’s

denial of her petition for writ of habeas corpus under 28 U.S.C. § 2254. We have

jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. §§ 1291 and 2253. “We review the district court’s

* This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3. ** The panel unanimously concludes this case is suitable for decision without oral argument. See Fed. R. App. P. 34(a)(2). denial of [a] § 2254 habeas corpus petition de novo.” Tamplin v. Muniz, 894 F.3d

1076, 1082 (9th Cir. 2018) (alteration in original) (citation omitted). We affirm.

In 2015, the Idaho Supreme Court concluded that the admission of Dr. Lucy

Rorke-Adams’ testimony regarding her technician’s statements did not violate the

Confrontation Clause. Stanfield contends that this decision involved an

unreasonable application of clearly established federal law under 28 U.S.C.

§ 2254(d)(1).

To assess a claim under § 2254(d)(1), we “first identify the relevant ‘clearly

established Federal law’” and then determine whether the state court’s application

of that law was unreasonable. Andrew v. White, 604 U.S. 86, 95 (2025) (quoting

28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1)). “Clearly established” “refers to the holdings . . . of [the

Supreme] Court’s decisions as of the time of the relevant state-court decision.”

Lockyer v. Andrade, 538 U.S. 63, 71 (2003) (quoting Williams v. Taylor, 529 U.S.

362, 412 (2000)).

The following cases set forth the relevant clearly established federal law at

the time of the Idaho Supreme Court’s decision. In Crawford v. Washington, the

Supreme Court held: “Testimonial statements of witnesses absent from trial [may

be] admitted only where the declarant is unavailable, and only where the defendant

has had a prior opportunity to cross-examine.” 541 U.S. 36, 59 (2004). In Davis v.

Washington, the Court applied the “primary purpose” test to determine whether a

2 25-2607 statement was testimonial, and it held that a caller’s statement to a 911 operator

was not testimonial because it was “made . . . under circumstances objectively

indicating that the primary purpose . . . [wa]s to enable police assistance to meet an

ongoing emergency.” 547 U.S. 813, 822, 828, 832 (2006). In Melendez-Diaz v.

Massachusetts, the Court held that an expert’s affidavit declaring that a tested

substance was cocaine was testimonial because it was a declaration made for the

purpose of establishing a fact at trial. 557 U.S. 305, 311 (2009). In Bullcoming v.

New Mexico, the Court held that the admission of an expert witness’s “surrogate

testimony” about a report wholly prepared by a different analyst violated the

Confrontation Clause because the testifying analyst “could not convey what [the

preparing analyst] knew or observed about the events his certification concerned.”

564 U.S. 647, 661 (2011).

In Williams v. Illinois, an expert testified at trial regarding a match between

the defendant’s DNA and a DNA forensic report that was created before the

defendant was suspected of the crime for which he was on trial, and the person

who prepared the pre-existing report did not testify. 567 U.S. 50, 62, 84–86 (2012)

(plurality opinion). The Supreme Court held that the pre-existing report was not

testimonial, and therefore, there was no Confrontation Clause violation. Id. at 81–

82, 86; id. at 103–04, 110–12 (Thomas, J., concurring in the judgment). Because

there was no majority opinion in Willliams, that case does not clearly establish any

3 25-2607 legal principle beyond the decision as limited to the unique set of facts presented in

that case. See Smith v. Arizona, 602 U.S. 779, 788 n.1 (2024) (observing that “no

single rationale for affirmance garnered a majority” in Williams); see also

Williams, 567 U.S. at 141 (Kagan, J., dissenting) (opining that “[w]hat comes out

of” the Court’s fractured decision “is—to be frank—who knows what” because no

rationale “commands the support of a majority”).

Stanfield concedes that the Idaho Supreme Court correctly identified the

legal principle established by these precedents when it explained: “The only

consistent requirement that can be distilled from these decisions is that in order for

a statement—forensic or otherwise—to be deemed testimonial, it must have been

made with a primary objective of creating an evidentiary record to establish or

prove a fact at trial.” Stanfield argues only that the Idaho Supreme Court

unreasonably applied that principle. We disagree.

The Idaho Supreme Court concluded that Dr. Rorke-Adams did not rely on

the technician’s implied assertion that she prepared the slides as Dr. Rorke-Adams

instructed because Dr. Rorke-Adams’ testimony established she “had personal

knowledge that the slides were stained correctly based on her comparison of the

slides with [a] control slide.” Even assuming the technician’s implied assertion

regarding how she prepared the slides was a testimonial statement, this case is

meaningfully different from Bullcoming. In Bullcoming, the testifying witness had

4 25-2607 no personal knowledge of the contents of the report at issue, 564 U.S. at 661, but

here, Dr. Rorke-Adams had personal knowledge that the slides were prepared

correctly. Stanfield does not identify any precedent making clear that a

Confrontation Clause violation occurs even when the testifying witness

independently verified the out-of-court statement’s veracity and therefore did not

rely on it.

The Idaho Supreme Court concluded that Dr. Rorke-Adams relied on the

technician’s labelling of the slides to determine they contained the victim’s brain

tissue, but the Court concluded that this labelling was done for a “laboratory—

rather than trial—purpose” and “thus [was] not testimonial.” That was not an

unreasonable application of the primary purpose test. The primary purpose test is

relatively general, and “the more general the federal rule, the more leeway state

courts have in reaching outcomes in case-by-case determinations before their

decisions can be fairly labeled unreasonable.” Brown v. Davenport, 596 U.S. 118,

144 (2022) (citation modified). Further, this case is meaningfully different from

Melendez-Diaz. Unlike the affidavit at issue in Melendez-Diaz, 557 U.S. at 311,

the technician’s labelling did not report the results of analysis or convey an opinion

bearing on an issue to be determined at trial.

AFFIRMED.

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