Petitioner-Appellant, D.C. No. 2:01-CV-02178-EHC District of Arizona, v. Phoenix RYAN THORNELL, ORDER

Respondent-Appellee. Before: CALLAHAN, NGUYEN, and BRESS, Circuit Judges.

The opinion filed on June 11, 2024, and appearing at 104 F.4th 120 is amended as follows. At Slip Op. page 33, line 18 [104 F.4th at 138], remove “see also Jones, 2024 WL 2751215, at *9 (noting that the Arizona Supreme Court has apparently never ‘vacated the judgment of death in a case involving multiple murders—let alone a case involving all of the aggravating circumstances present here’).”

With this amendment, the panel unanimously voted to deny the petition for panel rehearing and rehearing en banc. The full court has been advised of the petition for rehearing en banc, and no judge has requested a vote on whether to rehear the matter en banc. Fed. R. App. P. 35. The petition for rehearing, Dkt. No. 160, is DENIED. No further petitions for rehearing will be entertained. FOR PUBLICATION FILED UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS SEP 30 2024 MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK U.S. COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT CHAD ALAN LEE, No. 09-99002

Petitioner-Appellant, D.C. No. 2:01-CV-02178-EHC

v. OPINION RYAN THORNELL,

Respondent-Appellee.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Arizona Earl H. Carroll, District Judge, Presiding

Argued and Submitted November 14, 2023 San Francisco, California Before: Consuelo M. Callahan, Jacqueline H. Nguyen, and Daniel A. Bress, Circuit Judges.

Opinion by Judge Bress BRESS, Circuit Judge:

In April 1992, Chad Lee killed three people in three weeks. He was sentenced to death for each murder. The Arizona Supreme Court affirmed Lee’s convictions and sentence on direct appeal and denied his petitions for state postconviction relief. Lee then sought federal habeas relief under 28 U.S.C. § 2254, which the district court denied. We affirm. I

A

We describe the facts of Lee’s offenses, drawing largely from the Arizona Supreme Court’s decisions on direct appeal. State v. Lee, 944 P.2d 1204, 1209 (Ariz. 1997) (Lee I); State v. Lee, 944 P.2d 1222, 1226 (Ariz. 1997) (Lee II).

On April 6, 1992, Lee, then 19 years old, and his accomplice, David Hunt, age 14, called Pizza Hut from a pay phone and ordered a pizza delivered to a vacant house. When Linda Reynolds arrived with the pizza, Lee and Hunt pointed a rifle at her and forced her to remove her shorts and shirt. The two put Reynolds in Lee’s car, and Lee drove her into the desert. Hunt drove Reynolds’s car to meet them.

Once in the desert, Lee and Hunt removed Reynolds’s car stereo, smashed the windows and other parts of her car with a bat, punctured the tires, cut various hoses and wires to disable the engine, and shot a bullet through the hood. Lee later testified that he destroyed Reynolds’s car to prevent her from escaping.

Lee and Hunt forced Reynolds to remove her shoes, socks, and pantyhose and to walk barefoot into the desert. Hunt then raped her, and Lee forced Reyolds to perform oral sex on him. After finding Reynolds’s bank card in her wallet, Lee drove Reynolds and Hunt to an ATM. Lee gave Reynolds his flannel shirt to wear and th