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The dissent would reverse the Washington state courts based on the alleged confusion in Washington courts, and specifically in the Washington Court of Appeals on direct review, about the meaning of the Washington accomplice liability statute. Post, at 2–5 (opinion of Souter, J.). But the confusion in the Court of Appeals over the application of the statute involved the related, but legally distinct, question whether an accomplice is required to share the specific intent of the principal actor under Washington law. On direct appeal, respondent argued that he should not have been convicted as an accomplice to murder because he did not have the specific intent to kill. The Washington Court of Appeals rejected that argument because “it was not necessary for the State to prove Sarausad knew Ronquillo had a gun, or knew that there was a potential for gunplay that day” under Washington law, App. to Pet. for Cert. 266a, where “accomplice liability predicates criminal liability on general knowledge of a crime, rather than specific knowledge of the elements of the principal’s crime,” id., at 259a. But the Washington Court of Appeals never held that knowledge of a completely different crime, such as assault, would be sufficient under Washington law for accomplice liability for murder. See id., at 258a–259a; see also In re Domingo, 155 Wash. 2d 356, 367–368, 119 P. 3d 816, 822 (2005) (“[N]either Davis nor any of this court’s decisions subsequent to Davis approves of the proposition that accomplice liability attaches for any and all crimes committed by the principal so long as the putative accomplice knowingly aided in any one of the crimes”). In other words, the Court of Appeals had evaluated whether respondent’s conviction required a specific intent versus a general intent to kill, not whether it required knowledge of a murder versus knowledge of an assault—the issue under review here. Thus, the confusion in the state courts referenced by the dissent has no bearing on the question presented in this appeal, and does not support the dissent’s argument that the jury instruction in question was ambiguous.

To the extent that the Court of Appeals attempted to rewrite state law by proposing that the instruction should have included “an explicit statement that an accomplice must have knowledge of … the actual crime the principal intends to commit,” 479 F. 3d 671, 689–690 (CA9 2007), it compounded its error. The Washington Supreme Court expressly held that the jury instruction correctly set forth state law, App. to Pet. for Cert. 191a, and we have repeatedly held that “it is not the province of a federal habeas court to reexamine state-court determinations on state-law questions.” Estelle v. McGuire, 502 U. S. 62, 67–68 (1991) .
The dissent accuses us of downplaying this ambiguous hypothetical, arguing that it is so rife with improper meaning that it “infect[ed] every further statement bearing on accomplice law the prosecutor made,” post, at 7, and ensured that the jury misinterpreted the trial court’s properly-phrased instruction. We disagree. The proper inquiry is whether the state court was objectively unreasonable in concluding that the instruction (which precisely tracked the language of the accomplice-liability statute) was not warped by this one-paragraph hypothetical in an argument and rebuttal spanning 31 pages of the joint appendix. The state court’s conclusion was not unreasonable. The hypothetical was presented during closing arguments, which juries generally “vie[w] as the statements of advocates” rather than “as definitive and binding statements of the law,” Boyde v. California, 494 U. S. 370, 384 (1990) , and which, as a whole, made clear that the State sought a guilty verdict based solely on Sarausad’s “knowledge that his assistance would promote or facilitate the crime of premeditated murder,” App. 83; see also id., at 123–124.
The dissent argues that we “sideste[p] the thrust of this record” by finding that the trial judge’s answers to the jury’s questions were satisfactory. Post, at 9–10. But our decision cannot turn on a de novo review of the record or a finding that the answers were “the best way to answer jurors’ questions,” id., at 10. On federal habeas review, this Court’s inquiry is limited to whether the state court violated clearly established federal law when it held that the jury applied the correct standard, in light of the answers given to its questions. See 28 U. S. C. §2254(d)(1). On that issue, the state court was not objectively unreasonable; the jury’s questions were answered in a manner previously approved by this Court, and they consistently referred the jury to the correct standard for accomplice liability in Washington. The dissent also ignores the important fact that the jury convicted Ronquillo of first-degree murder, convicted respondent of second-degree murder, and failed to reach an agreement on Reyes’ guilt, causing a mistrial on the first-degree murder charge pending against him. The jury’s assignment of culpability to two of the codefendants, versus its deadlock over a third who, like respondent, conceded knowledge of an assault, demonstrates that the jury understood the legal significance of each defendant’s relative knowledge and intent with respect to the murder. As the majority notes, ante, at 11, n. 4, in the Washington Court of Appeals on direct review, Sarausad’s counsel claimed that state law required that an accomplice to murder have a specific intent to kill (or aid in killing). The Court of Appeals rejected this position. Contrary to the majority view, ante, at 12, n. 4, in gauging the adequacy of an instruction incorporating statutory terms, the fact that defense counsel may have asked for too much does nothing to lessen the pertinence of opaque state law or its uncertainty in the minds of the state judges. The Court of Appeals in its very response to counsel’s argument demonstrated its misunderstanding of the scope of Washington accomplice liability law: “accomplice liability predicates criminal liability on general knowledge of a crime.” Washington v. Ronquillo, No. 35840–5–I etc. (Mar. 2, 1998), App. to Pet. for Cert. 233a, 259a (emphasis added). For that matter, the Court of Appeals subsequently disavowed the very statement used by the majority to support its contention that the court was focused solely on the issue of specific intent. The court, in the postconviction proceedings, concluded that it was in fact necessary for the State to prove Sarausad knew Ronquillo had a gun, or knew there was potential for gunplay that day. Sarausad v. Washington, 109 Wash. App. 824, 837, 39 P. 3d 308, 315 (2001). This knowledge would have been necessary regardless of whether the law required Sarausad to have specific or general intent to kill, unless, of course, accomplice liability was predicated on an “in for a dime, in for a dollar” theory of liability and knowledge of a fistfight could suffice.
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