Daniel Carlos Garcia v. Chad Bianco, Sheriff, Riverside County, California

Whether the District Court erred in dismissing Petitioner's habeas petition on Younger abstention grounds without addressing the threshold question of whether California Penal Code Section 1485.5 creates a collateral estoppel effect that binds the State to factual concessions made in prior state habeas proceedings—an issue of first impression that no court has ever decided.

Whether the Ninth Circuit erred in denying a Certificate of Appealability when the District Court's failure to address the novel Section 1485.5 question, combined with Petitioner's substantial Double Jeopardy claim based on binding prosecutorial concessions of fabricated evidence and insufficient evidence, establishes that reasonable jurists would debate both the procedural ruling and the underlying constitutional claim under Slack v. McDaniel, 529 U.S. 473 (2000).

Whether the Double Jeopardy Clause of the Fifth Amendment bars retrial when the prosecution's binding Nonopposition under California Penal Code Section 1485.5—if accorded collateral estoppel effect—establishes that (a) the trial judge and prosecutors conspired to rig the trial through ex parte communications, fabricated evidence, and altered transcripts and; and (b) the evidence was insufficient to sustain the conviction without the fabricated evidence, thereby triggering protection under Burks v. United States, 437 U.S. 1 (1978), and Oregon v. Kennedy, 456 U.S. 667 (1982).