Where the state court disposed of Brooks' constitutional claims by relying on 'evidence' that indisputably did not exist and the district court affirmed on the basis of 'evidence' it invented out of thin air, did the Ninth Circuit err in denying a Certificate of Appealability?

QUESTION PRESENTED Rowan Brooks was 65 years old on the night in 2004 when his 68-year-old wife of eighteen years passed away. Neither the police officer on the scene nor the two forensic pathologists who examined the decedent’s body, who were both employees of the sheriff's department, ruled the death a homicide. The prosecution’s argument that the manner of death was a homicide was largely premised on fabricated “evidence” it elicited from its out-of-town forensic expert, which if exposed would have fundamentally altered the course of the trial such that it is reasonably debatable that there is a possibility that fair minded jurists could disagree about whether at least one juror would have had a reasonable doubt that the death was a homicide. Where the state court disposed of Brooks’ constitutional claims by relying on “evidence” that indisputably did not exist and the district court affirmed on the basis of “evidence” it invented out of thin air, did the Ninth Circuit err in denying a Certificate of Appealability? i