California State and Federal Courts Overturn Three Death Sentences

State and fed­er­al courts have over­turned three California death sen­tences in a span of two weeks from late June to mid-July 2022. Death-row pris­on­ers Richard Clark, Michael Bramit, and Andrew Lancaster were all grant­ed relief on claims relat­ed to defense counsel’s inad­e­quate per­for­mance or jury-relat­ed issues. Clark and Bramit will receive new penalty-phase trials.

Andrew Lancaster was sen­tenced to death in Los Angeles County in 1998. After accept­ing a stip­u­la­tion between Lancaster’s coun­sel and the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office that Lancaster had been pro­vid­ed inef­fec­tive assis­tance in the penal­ty phase of his cap­i­tal tri­al, a Los Angeles County tri­al court on July 1, 2022 vacat­ed Lancaster’s death sentence. 

On July 14, 2022, a fed­er­al dis­trict court, cit­ing juror mis­con­duct, reversed the death sen­tence imposed on Richard Clark in Santa Clara County in 1987. Judge William H. Orrick of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California found that a juror in Clark’s case had ​“con­sult­ed with a reli­gious fig­ure about the pro­pri­ety of vot­ing for the death penal­ty” before decid­ing to vote for death, in vio­la­tion of the juror’s oath to decide the case based sole­ly on the evi­dence pre­sent­ed at trial.

A Riverside County tri­al judge on June 30, 2022 reversed the death sen­tence imposed on Michael Bramit in his 1997 cap­i­tal mur­der tri­al. In a 93-page opin­ion, Superior Court Judge Stephen J. Gallon held that Bramit’s tri­al coun­sel was inef­fec­tive for fail­ing to inves­ti­gate and present mit­i­gat­ing evi­dence and for numer­ous fail­ures to ques­tion jurors about their inabil­i­ty to con­sid­er evi­dence for life. Judge Gallon wrote that Bramit’s attor­ney had pro­vid­ed ​“con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly inef­fec­tive assis­tance … dur­ing jury selec­tion and the penalty phase.”

The tri­al court’s rul­ing in Lancaster’s case comes more than a decade after he filed an amend­ed state habeas cor­pus peti­tion in the California Supreme Court in June 2010 alleg­ing that his tri­al coun­sel had pro­vid­ed inef­fec­tive penal­ty-phase rep­re­sen­ta­tion. In June 2020, the court dis­missed the remain­der of Lancaster’s habeas peti­tion, but found that he had alleged suf­fi­cient facts con­cern­ing tri­al counsel’s defi­cient per­for­mance that, if proven, would require over­turn­ing his death sen­tence. The court then returned Lancaster’s case to the Los Angeles Superior Court to con­sid­er his inef­fec­tive­ness claim, lead­ing to the stip­u­lat­ed grant of relief.

In Clark’s case, the fed­er­al court found that juror Fredrick Barnes had ​“har­bored some spir­i­tu­al or moral doubt about the ​‘pro­pri­ety of impos­ing the death penal­ty’” in the case, as evi­denced by his deci­sion to ​“s[eek] his minister’s opin­ion on that ques­tion at the moment he con­tem­plat­ed he would be tasked with mak­ing that deci­sion.” The advice from the min­is­ter, Judge Orrick wrote, ​“assuaged any doubt Barnes may have retained or devel­oped about the death penal­ty because of the minister’s sta­tus as a moral and spir­i­tu­al author­i­ty unique­ly posi­tioned to offer advice about the ​‘pro­pri­ety of impos­ing the death penal­ty.’” However, the court said, that advice con­sti­tut­ed an improp­er out­side influ­ence on the jury.

In Bramit’s case, Judge Gallon not­ed that, dur­ing jury selec­tion, “[n]one of the twelve sit­ting jurors was asked by tri­al coun­sel any ques­tions direct­ly relat­ed to the sen­tence of death or life in prison with­out parole, or the con­sid­er­a­tion of back­ground infor­ma­tion in reach­ing a sen­tenc­ing ver­dict. Four of the twelve jurors,” he said, ​“were not asked one sin­gle ques­tion by tri­al coun­sel dur­ing voir dire.” 

By con­trast, Judge Gallon wrote, “[r]easonably com­pe­tent coun­sel would have asked each and every juror ques­tions about the sen­tence of death or life in prison with­out parole and about their will­ing­ness to con­sid­er peti­tion­er’s back­ground as mit­i­ga­tion because many jurors’ ques­tion­naire answers on these dif­fi­cult and sen­si­tive sub­jects were unclear and could have been fur­ther devel­oped upon oral ques­tion­ing. Moreover, these ques­tions and answers are crit­i­cal to select­ing a jury that is not death prone and thus, not prej­u­diced against petitioner.”

Judge Gallon fur­ther found that defense coun­sel had unrea­son­ably failed to inves­ti­gate and present sub­stan­tial mit­i­gat­ing evi­dence that could have per­suad­ed the jury to spare Bramit’s life, instead pre­sent­ing a mate­ri­al­ly inac­cu­rate and prej­u­di­cial­ly defi­cient case for life. ​“Had coun­sel per­formed an ade­quate inves­ti­ga­tion in prepa­ra­tion for the penal­ty phase,” Gallon wrote, sig­nif­i­cant addi­tion­al mit­i­gat­ing evi­dence would have been uncov­ered, and had coun­sel com­pe­tent­ly pre­sent­ed that mit­i­gat­ing evi­dence, there is a rea­son­able like­li­hood that at least one juror would have been moved to reject the death penalty.” 

The court described the evi­dence about Bramit’s child­hood and upbring­ing that coun­sel failed to present as ​“heart­break­ing,” includ­ing ​“evi­dence of multi­gen­er­a­tional abuse, addic­tion, men­tal ill­ness, a lack of a father, severe neglect by his moth­er and ear­ly par­en­tifi­ca­tion of peti­tion­er, severe abuse and domes­tic vio­lence with­in the fam­i­ly, and neigh­bor­hood gang activ­i­ty and vio­lence.” Instead, the court said, coun­sel depict­ed Bramit to the jury as ​“some­one who had a lov­ing, car­ing fam­i­ly who reject­ed them to run with gangs.”