California Supreme Court Declines to Halt Death-Penalty Trials During State Execution Moratorium

The California Supreme Court has declined to review the peti­tions of two Los Angeles County defen­dants who had asked the Court to halt cap­i­tal pros­e­cu­tions in the wake of Governor Gavin Newsom​’s deci­sion to impose a mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions. The defen­dants had argued that there was an uncon­sti­tu­tion­al risk that jurors’ knowl­edge about the much-pub­li­cized mora­to­ri­um would lead them to believe that any death sen­tence they might impose was unlike­ly to be car­ried out and would there­fore dimin­ish their sense of respon­si­bil­i­ty for impos­ing that pun­ish­ment. The Court’s deci­sion not to review the peti­tions per­mits pros­e­cu­tors to move for­ward in seek­ing the death penalty.

California has not exe­cut­ed any­one since 2006 and Governor Newsom ordered the dis­man­tling of the state’s exe­cu­tion cham­ber at the same time that he announced the execution moratorium.

“In light of this par­a­digm shift, a California jury in a cap­i­tal case can­not be expect­ed to pro­vide a fair and rea­soned penal­ty phase deter­mi­na­tion free from spec­u­la­tion,” wrote lawyers of defen­dant Cleamon Johnson. The inabil­i­ty ​“to com­pre­hend ful­ly the grav­i­ty of their deci­sion,” Johnson argued, cre­ates a con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly unac­cept­able risk that jurors might impose a death sen­tence mere­ly to ​“send a mes­sage,” del­e­gat­ing to the courts the ulti­mate respon­si­bil­i­ty for whether a defen­dant should live or be con­demned to die. 

Lawyers for the oth­er defen­dant, Jade Douglas Harris, argued that ​“the courts can no longer safe­ly rely on the premise that jurors rec­og­nize a death sen­tence as an ​‘awe­some respon­si­bil­i­ty’ rather than a sym­bol­ic ver­dict.” Johnson’s tri­al lawyer, Robert Sanger, told the Los Angeles Times in July that “[t]he jury mak­ing that order has to real­ly believe it, because if they don’t, they could be cav­a­lier about it and just say: ​‘Well, let’s send a mes­sage.… We know [the death sen­tence] is nev­er going to hap­pen, but let’s do it anyway.”

Prosecutors argued in oppo­si­tion to the peti­tions that stan­dard jury instruc­tions are ade­quate to address the defen­dants’ con­cerns. ​“Jurors are rou­tine­ly asked to set aside these types of things in order to reach a just ver­dict based on the evi­dence and the law,” pros­e­cu­tors wrote in Johnson’s case. ​“The real goal of this peti­tion is to turn Governor Newsom’s mora­to­ri­um, which is nom­i­nal­ly a ​‘reprieve,’ into a judi­cial abo­li­tion of the death penal­ty in California.” 

Although California has not car­ried out an exe­cu­tion in more than a decade, it has the largest death row in the United States and has imposed more death sen­tences than any oth­er state in four of the last five years. The high num­ber of death sen­tences has been dri­ven large­ly by five south­ern California coun­ties, includ­ing Los Angeles County, where Johnson is being tried. A recent study by the ACLU showed that, like Harris and Johnson, all 22 peo­ple sen­tenced to death in Los Angeles under the admin­is­tra­tion of the cur­rent District Attorney have been peo­ple of color.