Crew v. Ratliff

── Crew v. Ratliff ── Court: Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit Date: April 27, 2026 Category: General NOT FOR PUBLICATION FILED UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS APR 27 2026 MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK U.S. COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT MARK CHRISTOPHER CREW, No. 24-5728 D.C. No. Petitioner-Appellant, 4:12-cv-04259-YGR v. MEMORANDUM* KATHLEEN N. RATLIFF, Acting Warden, Respondent-Appellee. Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of California Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, District Judge, Presiding Argued and Submitted March 9, 2026 San Francisco, California Before: H.A. THOMAS and JOHNSTONE, Circuit Judges, and LEFKOW, District Judge.** Mark Christopher Crew appeals the district court’s denial of his 28 U.S.C. § 2254 application for a writ of habeas corpus. He challenges his 1989 murder * This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3. ** The Honorable Joan H. Lefkow, United States District Judge for the Northern District of Illinois, sitting by designation. conviction under California’s financial gain special circumstance, Cal. Penal Code § 190.2(a)(1), which elevates his crime to a capital offense.1 We have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. §§ 1291, 2253. We affirm. We review the denial of a habeas petition de novo and the district court’s underlying findings of fact for clear error. Hogan v. Bean, 140 F.4th 1001, 1016 (9th Cir. 2025). Under § 2254(d), federal courts may grant habeas relief only where the underlying state court “decision [] was (1) contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States; or (2) . . . based on an unreasonable determination of the facts in light of the evidence presented in the State court proceeding.” 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1)–(2); see also Ochoa v. Davis, 16 F.4th 1314, 1325 (9th Cir. 2021). “We apply this highly deferential standard [of review] to the last reasoned state court decision on the merits.” Bejarano v. Reubart, 136 F.4th 873, 886 (9th Cir. 2025). Here, the last reasoned state court decision on the merits is People v. Crew, 74 P.3d 820 (Cal. 2003), which affirmed Crew’s conviction under the special circumstance. 1. The California Supreme Court did not unreasonably apply clearly established federal law. Crew argues that the Court violated his due process rights as set forth in Bouie v. City of Columbia, 378 U.S. 347 (1964), when it 1 In 2024, Crew was resentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. 2 24-5728 retroactively applied People v. Howard, 749 P.2d 279 (Cal. 1988), and denied his claim that he was entitled to the limiting construction set forth in People v. Bigelow, 691 P.2d 994 (Cal. 1984).2 Bouie held that the fair-notice requirement of due process is violated when a defendant is convicted based on the retroactive application of an unforeseeable judicial expansion of statutory language that is “indefensible by reference to the law which had been expressed prior to the conduct in issue.” 378 U.S. at 354 (citation modified). The law expressed prior to Crew’s offense in 1982 was the plain language of the financial gain special circumstance. See Cal. Penal Code § 190.2(a)(1) (1978) (“The murder was intentional and carried out for financial gain.”). The California Supreme Court construed that language in 1988