Walker v. Montgomery

• Court: Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
• Decided: March 10, 2026
• Docket: 24-5585
• Status: Unpublished

Opinion

NOT FOR PUBLICATION FILED UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS MAR 10 2026 MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK U.S. COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

THOMAS GAFFNEY WALKER, No. 24-5585 D.C. No. Petitioner - Appellant, 8:21-cv-00626-SSS-JPR v. MEMORANDUM*

WARREN L. MONTGOMERY, Warden; XAVIER BECERRA,

Respondents - Appellees.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Central District of California Sunshine Suzanne Sykes, District Judge, Presiding

Argued and Submitted February 18, 2026 El Centro, California

Before: TALLMAN and OWENS, Circuit Judges, and MONTENEGRO, District Judge.**

California state prisoner Thomas Gaffney Walker (“Walker”) appeals from

the district court’s denial of his 28 U.S.C. § 2254 habeas petition challenging his

* This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3. ** The Honorable Ruth Bermudez Montenegro, United States District Judge for the Southern District of California, sitting by designation. 2017 convictions for burglary, sex offenses, and other related crimes. We have

jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. §§ 1291 and 2253. As the parties are familiar with the

facts, we do not recount them here. We affirm.

The California Court of Appeal’s (“CCA”) denial of Walker’s Faretta

request was neither “contrary to, [n]or involved an unreasonable application of,

clearly established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United

States.” 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1). The Supreme Court in Faretta v. California, 422

U.S. 806, 835 (1975), clearly established that a self-representation request made

“weeks before trial” is timely. See Burton v. Davis, 816 F.3d 1132, 1141 (9th Cir.

2016) (quoting Faretta, 422 U.S. at 835–36); Marshall v. Taylor, 395 F.3d 1058,

1061 (9th Cir. 2005). But the CCA’s determination that Walker’s Faretta

request—made fifteen days before trial—was untimely does not meet the

requirements of § 2254(d)(1).

A state court decision is “contrary to” clearly established law if the state

court applies a rule that contradicts controlling Supreme Court authority or “if the

state court confronts a set of facts that are materially indistinguishable from a

decision” of the Supreme Court but nevertheless arrives at a different result.

Williams v. Taylor, 529 U.S. 362, 406 (2000). The CCA did not apply a rule

contradicting Faretta when it noted Walker’s “lack of legal training” and “lack of

knowledge regarding the charges” in denying his self-representation waiver, as

2 24-5585 these were not the grounds for denying the request. Instead, the CCA denied the

request because it was untimely. This case is also not materially indistinguishable

from Faretta, as the defendants submitted their requests for self-representation at

vastly different times—Faretta the day after charges were filed and Walker over

four years after charges were filed. Brief for Respondent at 6 Faretta v.

California, 422 U.S. 806 (1975) (No. 73-5772), 1974 WL 186114, at *6.

Nor was the CCA’s decision “objectively unreasonable.” White v. Woodall,

572 U.S. 415, 419 (2014) (noting that an unreasonable application of clearly

established federal law must be “objectively unreasonable, not merely wrong”

(internal quotation marks and citation omitted)). The inherent ambiguity in

Faretta’s “weeks before trial” rule makes it reasonable for the CCA to conclude

that Walker’s request, made fifteen days before trial, was not timely. See Clark v.

Broomfield, 83 F.4th 1141, 1151 (9th Cir. 2023) (noting that the Supreme Court

never “delineated the ‘precise contours’ of Faretta’s timeliness requirement”

(citation omitted)); Marshall, 395 F.3d at 1061 (“[W]e still do not know the precise

contours of [Faretta’s timing] element.”).

Our decisions in Moore v. Calderon, 108 F.3d 261, 265 (9th Cir. 1997),

overruled on other grounds by, Williams, 529 U.S. at 412, and Tamplin v. Muniz,

894 F.3d 1076, 1089 (9th Cir. 2018), do not dictate otherwise because our

respective analyses under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of

3 24-5585 1996 (AEDPA) were dicta. Moore’s AEDPA analysis was irrelevant to the result

because the pre-AEDPA rules controlled based on when the habeas petition was

filed. See Lindh v. Murphy, 521 U.S. 320, 322–23 (1997) (holding that AEDPA’s

amendments did not apply to habeas applications “that were already pending when

the Act was passed”). Tamplin’s analysis was irrelevant to the result because the

case was decided on de novo review, 894 F.3d at 1086, and our AEDPA discussion

was in the context of a counterfactual hypothetical. Id. at 1088–89.

AFFIRMED.

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