Capital Case Roundup — Death Penalty Court Decisions the Week of June 15, 2020

NEWS (6/​19/​20) — California: In one of the few cap­i­tal tri­als to move for­ward dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, a San Jose jury acquit­ted Manuel Anthony Lopez of charges that he had raped and mur­dered his girlfriend’s two-year-old son. Lopez, who had been jailed four years await­ing tri­al, had con­sis­tent­ly pro­fessed his inno­cence, and news reports said his lead defense coun­sel, Santa Clara County deputy pub­lic defend­er Michael Ogul, believed so strong­ly in Lopez’s inno­cence that he post­poned his retire­ment two years to be able to see the case to its conclusion.

Prosecutors pre­sent­ed DNA evi­dence that they assert­ed linked Lopez to the child’s death. Defense coun­sel, how­ev­er, retained an expert wit­ness in prob­a­bilis­tic geno­typ­ing who showed the jury that the low lev­els of Lopez’s DNA and the pres­ence of mul­ti­ple oth­er people’s DNA in the sam­ples proved only the uncon­test­ed fact that Lopez had been present in his girlfriend’s house and failed to link him to any of the injuries sus­tained by the child.

NEWS (6/​18) — Washington, D.C.: The U.S. Supreme Court has issued an order grant­i­ng a joint pro­pos­al by fed­er­al death-row pris­on­ers and the Department of Justice to expe­dite brief­ing and con­sid­er­a­tion relat­ing to the pris­on­ers’ chal­lenge to the fed­er­al exe­cu­tion pro­to­col. The rul­ing will allow the Court to con­sid­er the pris­on­ers’ peti­tion dur­ing its reg­u­lar­ly sched­uled June 25 con­fer­ence before the Court adjourns for the sum­mer. The Department of Justice had issued death war­rants sched­ul­ing the exe­cu­tion of three of the pris­on­ers despite the pen­den­cy of their exe­cu­tion protocol appeal.

The Court direct­ed the Department of Justice (DOJ) and any groups who wish to file ami­cus curi­ae briefs in the case to file their plead­ings by Friday, June 19. The pris­on­ers were direct­ed to file their reply by Monday, June 22, 2020. The attor­ney general’s office filed its brief oppos­ing the pris­on­ers’ peti­tion, and a group of 15 law pro­fes­sors who study and teach fed­er­al admin­is­tra­tive law filed an ami­cus brief in sup­port of the prisoners.

NEWS (6/​18) — California: A split pan­el of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has affirmed the rul­ing of a California fed­er­al dis­trict court that denied death-row pris­on­er Deondre Staten​’s habeas cor­pus chal­lenge to his con­vic­tion and death sentence.

The court agreed that Staten’s tri­al lawyer had unrea­son­ably failed to inves­ti­gate and present evi­dence that a Los Angeles gang had claimed cred­it for the mur­ders and failed to call a defense expert who could have rebutted the tes­ti­mo­ny of the prosecution’s gang expert. However, two of the judges held that Staten did not show that the California Supreme Court, which sum­mar­i­ly dis­missed Staten’s claim with­out an expla­na­tion of its rea­sons, had ​“no rea­son­able basis” for its deci­sion. Judge Marsha S. Berzon dis­sent­ed, say­ing the court should have returned the case to the dis­trict court for a hear­ing on whether counsel’s defi­cient rep­re­sen­ta­tion had been prejudicial.

NEWS (6/​15) — Ohio: A Summit County, Ohio tri­al court declared a mis­tri­al in the death-penal­ty tri­al of Stanley Floyd after jurors expressed con­cerns about resum­ing the high-pro­file arson-mur­der pro­ceed­ings dur­ing the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic. Ford is charged with set­ting two fires in which a total of nine peo­ple, includ­ing five chil­dren, were killed.

Ford’s tri­al had been sched­uled to resume on June 16, with at least two weeks of tes­ti­mo­ny remain­ing in the guilt phase, fol­lowed by a penal­ty-phase if the jury con­vict­ed. A pre­tri­al con­fer­ence has been set for August 11 to sched­ule a new trial date.