## Facts

- Tare Nicholas Beltran, a California state prisoner, was convicted in California state court of murdering his ex-girlfriend, Claire Joyce Tempongko.
- At trial, the prosecution introduced evidence about Beltran’s long history of domestic violence against Tempongko.
- Tempongko was unavailable to testify at Beltran’s murder trial.
- Beltran later challenged the admission of Tempongko’s out-of-court statements to police officers, arguing that admitting those statements without cross-examination violated the Sixth Amendment’s Confrontation Clause.
- One challenged set of statements was made to Officer Lack, who arrived immediately after a domestic-violence dispute.
- When Tempongko spoke to Officer Lack, Beltran was still in the apartment, and Tempongko had been locked in her bedroom and could not leave the residence.
- A second challenged set of statements was made to Officer Dharmani about a different assault.
- When Tempongko spoke to Officer Dharmani, Beltran had already left the scene and did not pose an immediate threat to Tempongko at that time.
- After completing state-court review, Beltran filed a federal habeas corpus petition in 2014 under 28 U.S.C. § 2254 in the Northern District of California.
- The district court addressed whether the state courts’ rejection of Beltran’s Confrontation Clause claims justified federal habeas relief under AEDPA and, if any constitutional error occurred, whether it warranted relief on collateral review.

## Issues

1. Did the state courts unreasonably apply clearly established Supreme Court Confrontation Clause law by allowing Tempongko’s statements to Officer Lack and Officer Dharmani to be admitted at Beltran’s trial, despite Beltran having no opportunity to cross-examine Tempongko?
2. If admission of any of those statements violated the Confrontation Clause, did the error have a substantial and injurious effect on the verdict such that federal habeas relief was warranted?

## Decision

- The district court denied the petition for a writ of habeas corpus.
- The court concluded that the state courts reasonably determined that Tempongko’s statements to Officer Lack were made in response to an ongoing emergency, because Beltran remained in the apartment and Tempongko was trapped and unable to leave.
- As to Tempongko’s statements to Officer Dharmani, which were made after Beltran had left and the immediate danger had ended, the court held Beltran was not entitled to relief under AEDPA; and even assuming a Confrontation Clause violation, any error did not warrant habeas relief because it was harmless under the federal collateral-review standard.
- The court denied a certificate of appealability.

## Legal Principles

- A federal court may grant habeas relief under 28 U.S.C. § 2254 only if the state-court decision was contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established Supreme Court precedent, or rested on an unreasonable determination of the facts. 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d).
- The Sixth Amendment Confrontation Clause generally bars admission of testimonial hearsay against a criminal defendant unless the declarant is unavailable and the defendant had a prior opportunity to cross-examine the declarant. (Crawford v. Washington.)
- Whether a statement is “testimonial” depends on its primary purpose; statements made to assist police in addressing an ongoing emergency are generally non-testimonial, while statements aimed at establishing past events for later prosecution are more likely testimonial. (Davis v. Washington; Michigan v. Bryant.)
- Even if a constitutional violation is assumed, federal habeas relief requires the petitioner to show the error had a substantial and injurious effect or influence on the jury’s verdict. (Brecht v. Abrahamson.)
- A certificate of appealability may be denied when the petitioner does not make a substantial showing of the denial of a constitutional right. 28 U.S.C. § 2253(c).

## Conclusion

In Beltran v. Warden, the Northern District of California denied Beltran’s § 2254 petition challenging the admission of the victim’s statements to two police officers, holding that the state courts reasonably treated the on-scene statements to Officer Lack as non-testimonial because they were made during an ongoing emergency and concluding that, as to the later statements to Officer Dharmani, Beltran was not entitled to habeas relief under AEDPA and any assumed Confrontation Clause error was harmless under Brecht; the court also denied a certificate of appealability.


Beltran v. Warden, 2015 WL 7874326 (2015)