Entries tagged with “Cleamon Johnson”
Issues
Sep 16, 2019
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…
Issues
Jul 19, 2019
California Supreme Court to Consider Petition to Halt Capital Prosecutions
Calling Governor Gavin Newsom’s moratorium on executions a “paradigm shift” in the death-penalty landscape, a defendant facing the death penalty in Los Angeles has petitioned the California Supreme Court to halt capital prosecutions in the state. On July 1, 2019, lawyers for Cleamon Johnson — whose death penalty trial is scheduled to begin in January 2020 — have filed a pretrial petition for review, arguing that capital juries “cannot be expected to provide a fair and reasoned penalty-phase…