Vanessa Rodriguez v. Ryan Thornell

• Court: Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
• Decided: March 25, 2025
• Docket: 22-16297
• Status: Unpublished

Opinion

NOT FOR PUBLICATION FILED UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS MAR 25 2025

FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK U.S. COURT OF APPEALS

VANESSA LYNN RODRIGUEZ, No. 22-16297 Petitioner-Appellant, D.C. No. 4:20-cv-00068-DTF v. RYAN THORNELL, Director, Arizona MEMORANDUM* Department of Corrections; ATTORNEY GENERAL FOR THE STATE OF ARIZONA, Respondents-Appellees,

Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Arizona D. Thomas Ferraro, Magistrate Judge, Presiding Argued and Submitted September 12, 2024 Phoenix, Arizona

Before: RAWLINSON and COLLINS, Circuit Judges, and FITZWATER,** District Judge.

Petitioner Vanessa Lynn Rodriguez appeals from the district court’s denial

of her petition for a writ of habeas corpus challenging her convictions in Arizona

state court for armed robbery, aggravated robbery, and kidnapping. Rodriguez

contends that she is entitled to habeas relief on the ground that her defense counsel

* This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3. ** The Honorable Sidney A. Fitzwater, United States District Judge for the Northern District of Texas, sitting by designation. rendered constitutionally ineffective assistance at her state court trial. A panel of

this court granted a certificate of appealability, limited to the question of “whether

trial counsel was ineffective for failing to move to suppress [her] post-arrest

statements.” We have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. §§ 1291, 2253(a). We affirm.

1. In the district court, Rodriguez filed a motion to expand the record to

include the following items relating to the police investigation and to her arrest and

questioning: (1) Officer Brady’s supplemental notes; (2) a police-generated event

chronology labeled “E133160971”; (3) a transcript of an interview of Officer

Brady; (4) Officer Schrage’s supplemental notes; (5) a transcript of an interview of

Officer Schrage; (6) Officer Schneider’s supplemental notes; and (7) a transcript of

an interview of Detective Barber. Items (1), (2), and (6), and excerpts of item (7)

were submitted to the state court in connection with a motion for reconsideration,

and the parties agreed at oral argument that the Arizona Court of Appeals held, in

the alternative, that (1) these documents had not been properly submitted in

accordance with state law; and (2) in any event, these documents would not make a

difference to the outcome. Items (3), (4), and (5), by contrast, had not been

presented to the state court in any form. The district court denied Rodriguez’s

motion to expand the record and declined to consider these documents in

evaluating Rodriguez’s claims.

We agree that the district court did not abuse its discretion in declining to

2 consider the subset of documents—items (3), (4), (5), and the additional portions

of item (7)—that had not been presented to the state court at all. See Djerf v. Ryan,

931 F.3d 870, 884 (9th Cir. 2019) (stating that a district court’s denial of a motion

to expand the record is reviewed for abuse of discretion). Because “review under

[28 U.S.C.] § 2254(d)(1) is limited to the record that was before the state court that

adjudicated the claim on the merits,” Cullen v. Pinholster, 563 U.S. 170, 181

(2011), we cannot consider these new materials. However, the parties vigorously

dispute whether the district court should have considered the remaining items,

which were presented to the state court only in connection with the reconsideration

motion, but we need not resolve this issue. As noted, both sides agree that the state

court, in the alternative, took these latter items into consideration and held that they

would make no difference. Because we conclude, under our de novo review of the

district court’s ruling, see Brown v. Ornoski, 503 F.3d 1006, 1010 (9th Cir. 2007),

that this alternative ruling of the state court must be upheld under the deferential

standards of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, 28 U.S.C.

§ 2254(d), we need not decide whether the district court here properly declined to

consider these latter documents.

2. Here, we consider both the Arizona Court of Appeals’ opinion and the

decision of the lower court to the extent that the state appellate court adopted its

analysis. See Edwards v. Lamarque, 475 F.3d 1121, 1126 (9th Cir. 2007).

3 a. The state court’s decision was not based on an “unreasonable

determination of the facts” under 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(2). Rodriguez contends

that, under Brumfield v. Cain, 576 U.S. 305 (2015), she made a sufficient showing

to require an evidentiary hearing for her state-court postconviction petition and

that, as a result, the state court’s failure to grant her a hearing “resulted in an

unreasonable determination of the facts” for purposes of § 2254(d)(2). See id. at

322. We reject this contention. Rodriguez’s postconviction petition failed to

present sufficient facts to require an evidentiary hearing as to whether she was in

custody when she spoke with Officer Brady. As to her argument that the state

court should have held a hearing as to whether Barber threatened to have her child

taken away, the state court properly noted that Rodriguez had not presented any

evidence that she had relayed such a claim to her counsel for use in a motion to

suppress. And Rodriguez did not otherwise make a sufficient showing that a

hearing was necessary to assess whether counsel acted reasonably in not filing a

motion to suppress. See Brumfield, 576 U.S. at 322; State v. Amaral, 368 P.3d

925, 928 (Ariz. 2016).

b. The state court did not unreasonably apply Strickland when it denied

Rodriguez’s claim that her trial counsel was ineffective for failing to move to

suppress statements she made to Officer Brady. Under Strickland v. Washington,

466 U.S. 668 (1984), the defendant must show that an attorney’s performance falls

4 “below an objective standard of reasonableness.” Id. at 687–88. And under

Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (1966), un-Mirandized statements obtained

during questioning may be suppressed only if a person was “in custody.” Id. at

445. The state courts reasonably concluded that, under all the circumstances,

Rodriguez was not “in custody” when she made statements to Officer Brady given

that a reasonable person in her situation would have felt free to terminate the

questioning. See Howes v. Fields, 565 U.S. 499, 508–09 (2012). Because

Rodriguez had no colorable claim that her Miranda rights were violated, her

counsel could not be considered ineffective for failing to file a groundless motion.

See Martinez v. Ryan, 926 F.3d 1215, 1226 (9th Cir. 2019).

c. Rodriguez conceded at oral argument that, if her Miranda claim vis-à-vis

Officer Brady failed, then her claim that the subsequent Mirandized interrogation

by Detective Barber violated Missouri v. Seibert, 542 U.S. 600 (2004), would also

fail. Because Rodriguez’s opening brief raises no ground other than Miranda and

Seibert for contending that her trial counsel was ineffective in failing to move to

suppress her statements to Detective Barber, the state court reasonably rejected her

ineffective assistance claim vis-à-vis Detective Barber.

AFFIRMED.