Mark Bradford v. Dao Vang

── Mark Bradford v. Dao Vang ── Court: Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit Date: May 14, 2026 Category: General FOR PUBLICATION UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT MARK ALAN BRADFORD, No. 23-99005 Petitioner-Appellee, D.C. No. 2:97-cv-06221- v. TJH DAO VANG, Warden, OPINION Respondent-Appellant. Appeal from the United States District Court for the Central District of California Terry J. Hatter, Jr., District Judge, Presiding Argued and Submitted June 23, 2025 Seattle, Washington Filed May 14, 2026 Before: Ronald M. Gould, Milan D. Smith, Jr., and Daniel P. Collins, Circuit Judges. Opinion by Judge Collins 2 BRADFORD V. VANG SUMMARY * Habeas Corpus / Death Penalty The panel (1) reversed the district court’s judgment granting habeas corpus relief to Mark Alan Bradford on his guilt-phase Claims 4 (Brady) and 8 (Strickland) and setting aside his California conviction for first-degree murder; and (2) remanded for the district court (a) to enter an order denying Bradford’s habeas petition in its entirety insofar as it challenges (i) his judgment of conviction for first-degree murder, rape, and sodomy; (ii) the jury’s special circumstance findings; and (iii) the judgment of conviction on the special circumstances; and (b) to resolve any remaining aspects of Bradford’s penalty-phase claims. The panel held that, as in Lambrix v. Singletary, 520 U.S. 518 (1997), it is appropriate to address the merits of Bradford’s claims under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA) before considering (if necessary) the issue of whether, under Coleman v. Thompson, 501 U.S. 722 (1991), Bradford has shown prejudice sufficient to excuse his state-law procedural default. This is because both Claims 4 and 8 contain a prejudice component that overlaps with the Coleman inquiry, and the standard of review applicable to the prejudice component of the merits of those claims is more deferential than the standard that applies to the Coleman prejudice inquiry. * This summary constitutes no part of the opinion of the court. It has been prepared by court staff for the convenience of the reader.  BRADFORD V. VANG 3 Before turning to the merits of Bradford’s Brady and Strickland claims under AEDPA’s deferential standards, the panel addressed another threshold issue—whether, as Bradford argued, the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, 603 U.S. 369 (2024), calls into question the prevailing judicial interpretations of 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d) and requires rejection of current precedent’s highly deferential standard of review of state court merits decisions under AEDPA. The panel rejected this contention. The panel therefore evaluated the California Supreme Court’s summary denial of Claims 4 and 8 under AEDPA’s deferential standards. • Addressing the parties’ dispute as to what facts this court must accept as true, the panel explained that it must consider how the California Supreme Court may reasonably have construed the adequacy of Bradford’s allegations under California law. The panel concluded that the California Supreme Court could reasonably have concluded that Bradford failed to support his allegation—made on “information and belief”—that blood-alcohol- content testing of Bradford’s blood had in fact been done. • Bradford’s Brady claim (Claim 4) rested exclusively on his contention that the State had suppressed the results of blood-alcohol-content testing that had actually been conducted on Bradford’s blood sample. Because the California Su