In the per curiam decision of the US Supreme Court in the recent case of E. K. McDANIEL, WARDEN, et al., PETITIONERS v. TROY BROWN, dated January 11, 2010, acting on writ of certiorari to the US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit (see: http://laws.findlaw.com/us/000/08-559.html), the following doctrinal pronouncements in re: a prisoner-initiated habeas corpus petition were made, including a discussion on the admissibility and the interpretation of post-conviction DNA evidence, thus:
1. In Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U. S. 307 (1979), we held that a state prisoner is entitled to habeas corpus relief if a federal judge finds that "upon the record evidence adduced at the trial no rational trier of fact could have found proof of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt." A Nevada jury convicted respondent of rape; the evidence presented included DNA evidence matching respondent's DNA profile. Nevertheless, relying upon a report prepared by a DNA expert over 11 years after the trial, the Federal District Court applied the Jackson standard and granted the writ. A divided Court of Appeals affirmed. Brown v. Farwell, 525 F. 3d 787 (CA9 2008). We granted certiorari to consider whether those courts misapplied Jackson. Because the trial record includes both the DNA evidence and other convincing evidence of guilt, we conclude that they clearly did.
2. The “prosecutor's fallacy” is the assumption that the random match probability is the same as the probability that the defendant was not the source of the DNA sample. See Nat. Research Council, Comm. on DNA Forensic Science, The Evaluation of Forensic DNA Evidence 133 (1996) ("Let P equal the probability of a match, given the evidence genotype. The fallacy is to say that P is also the probability that the DNA at the crime scene came from someone other than the defendant"). In other words, if a juror is told the probability a member of the general population would share the same DNA is 1 in 10,000 (random match probability), and he takes that to mean there is only a 1 in 10,000 chance that someone other than the defendant is the source of the DNA found at the crime scene (source probability), then he has succumbed to the prosecutor's fallacy. It is further error to equate source probability with probability of guilt, unless there is no explanation other than guilt for a person to be the source of crime-scene DNA. This faulty reasoning may result in an erroneous statement that, based on a random match probability of 1 in 10,000, there is a .01% chance the defendant is innocent or a 99.99% chance the defendant is guilty.
3. Respondent therefore correctly concedes that a reviewing court must consider all of the evidence admitted at trial when considering a Jackson claim. Even if we set that concession aside, however, and assume that the Court of Appeals could have considered the Mueller Report in the context of a Jackson claim, the court made an egregious error in concluding the Nevada Supreme Court's rejection of respondent's insufficiency-of-the-evidence claim "involved an unreasonable application of ... clearly established Federal law," 28 U. S. C. §2254(d)(1).4
4. Even if the Court of Appeals could have considered it, the Mueller Report provided no warrant for entirely excluding the DNA evidence or Romero's testimony from that court's consideration. The Report did not contest that the DNA evidence matched Troy. That DNA evidence remains powerful inculpatory evidence even though the State concedes Romero overstated its probative value by failing to dispel the prosecutor's fallacy. And Mueller's claim that Romero used faulty assumptions and underestimated the probability of a DNA match between brothers indicates that two experts do not agree with one another, not that Romero's estimates were unreliable.5
5. Furthermore, the Court of Appeals' discussion of the non-DNA evidence departed from the deferential review that Jackson and §2254(d)(1) demand. A federal habeas court can only set aside a state-court decision as "an unreasonable application of ... clearly established Federal law," §2254(d)(1), if the state court's application of that law is "objectively unreasonable," Williams v. Taylor, 529 U. S. 362, 409 (2000). And Jackson requires a reviewing court to review the evidence "in the light most favorable to the prosecution." 443 U. S., at 319. Expressed more fully, this means a reviewing court "faced with a record of historical facts that supports conflicting inferences must presume--even if it does not affirmatively appear in the record--that the trier of fact resolved any such conflicts in favor of the prosecution, and must defer to that resolution." Id., at 326; see also Schlup v. Delo, 513 U. S. 298, 330 (1995) ("The Jackson standard ... looks to whether there is sufficient evidence which, if credited, could support the conviction"). The Court of Appeals acknowledged that it must review the evidence in the light most favorable to the prosecution, but the court's recitation of inconsistencies in the testimony shows it failed to do that.
6. As respondent acknowledges, in order to prevail on this claim, he would have to show that the state court's adjudication of the claim was "contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal law." 28 U. S. C. §2254(d)(1). The clearly established law he points us to is Manson v. Brathwaite, 432 U. S. 98, 114 (1977), in which we held that when the police have used a suggestive eyewitness identification procedure, "reliability is the linchpin in determining" whether an eyewitness identification may be admissible, with reliability determined according to factors set out in Neil v. Biggers, 409 U. S. 188 (1972). Respondent argues that the admission of the inaccurate DNA testimony violated Brathwaite because the testimony was "identification testimony," 432 U. S., at 114, was "unnecessarily suggestive," id., at 113, and was unreliable.
7. We have stated before that "DNA testing can provide powerful new evidence unlike anything known before." District Attorney's Office for Third Judicial Dist. v. Osborne, 557 U. S. ___, ___ (2009) (slip op., at 8). Given the persuasiveness of such evidence in the eyes of the jury, it is important that it be presented in a fair and reliable manner. The State acknowledges that Romero committed the prosecutor's fallacy, Brief for Petitioners 54, and the Mueller Report suggests that Romero's testimony may have been inaccurate regarding the likelihood of a match with one of respondent's brothers. Regardless, ample DNA and non-DNA evidence in the record adduced at trial supported the jury's guilty verdict under Jackson, and we reject respondent's last minute attempt to recast his claim under Brathwaite. The Court of Appeals did not consider, however, the ineffective-assistance claims on which the District Court also granted respondent habeas relief. Accordingly, the judgment of the Court of Appeals is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
