In Sharma v. Holder, Sharma complained that Indian police interrogated and threatened him in an effort intimidate his father into ceasing work on a book.  Sharma's evidence "overwhelmingly" led to the finding that the police were concerned with stopping the publication of the father's book rather than having any interest in Sharma's political beliefs.

Sharma introduced heresay evidence to the immigration judge of his father's report to him that the police continued to threaten Sharma after he came to the United States.  But the court found that because report was hearsay, the immigration tribunal was permitted to give the it less weight than other evidence in the record.  Gu v. Gonzales, 454 F.3d 1014, 1021 (9th Cir. 2006).  Asylum applicants often face a hearsay problem when a witness is located outside of the United States, or is inside the United States illegally and refuses to testify because of the risk of arrest and detention should he appear as a witness in the immigration court proceeding.

The court held that one requirement to sustain a claim for political asylum based on imputed political opinion is that the imputed political opinion was the motive and the cause of the persecution.  The court noted in Sharma that the police used Sharma as a tool to convince his father to stop working on his book and not because the police believed that Sharma held certain political views regardless of whether he in fact held them.  The Sharma court battled the dissent by pointing out a clause in Silaya v. Mukasey, 524 F.3d 1066 (9th Cir. 2008) that the dissent argued compelled a different outcome:

Where the police beat and threaten [a family member] of a known dissident, it is logical, in the absence of evidence pointing to another motive, to conclude that they did so because of the [family member's] presumed guilt by association.

The court held that Sharma presented evidence pointing to another motive and therefore the holding in Silaya v. Mukasey did not apply to this case.  Once Sharma's father abandoned his plans to publish the book, turned over his research to the police, and remained employed and unharmed in India, Sharma's fear of persecution was no longer reasonable.  The court observed that if the father is not experiencing persection living in India and the Indian authorities had persecuted the son specifically to stop the father from writing his book, the fact that the father is not being persecuted makes it unlikely that the son will be.

Sharma also married a US citizen while in removal proceedings.  The law states that there is a presumption that such marriages are for immigration purposes and are thus invalid, but the applicant may overcome this presumption with evidence of the bona fides of the marriage.  To do this Sharma presented evidence of a marriage ceremony, utility bills, greeting cards and other evidence of the "joining" of the spouses' lives, but the court noted that this joining occurred "after the fact" of the immigration court proceeding.

The court found that evidence of courtship and comingling of lives after the marriage, which occurred after removal proceedings were commenced, was insufficient to overcome the presumption of invalidity.  This part of the court's holding is somewhat new because the court's holding means that no matter how bona fide a marriage is, if it was entered into after removal proceedings began, the applicant must produce evidence of courtship or comingling of lives before the marriage.

The case is Sharma v. Holder, No. 09-71104 (9th Cir. Feb 1, 2011).