Supreme Court of California

Conviction and sentence in a death penalty case are affirmed on automatic appeal over claims of error regarding: 1) the excusal of a prospective juror; 2) admission of results of electrophoretic testing; 3) destruction of evidence; 4) denial of a motion to exclude pre-trial and in-court identifications; 5) admission of defendant's letter to his landlord; 6) admission of a neighbor's statement to an officer; 7) prosecutorial misconduct; 8) juror misconduct; 9) jury instructions; 10) refusal to admit, as mitigating evidence in the penalty phase, a pretrial plea offer from the prosecution; 11) proposed penalty instructions; 12) the constitutionality of statutes and jury instructions regarding the burden of proof at the penalty phase; 13) overbreadth and vagueness of a statutory provision; 14) a failure to delete inapplicable sentencing factors; 15) inclusion of restrictive adjectives in list of potential mitigating factors; 16) a lack of written findings regarding aggravators; 17) an equal protection claim; 18) the constitutionality of certain instructions; 19) a failure to provide intercase proportionality review; 20) an international law claim; and 21) cumulative error.

Appellate Information

• Decided 05/17/2007
• Published 05/17/2007

Judges

• CHIN, J.

Court

• Supreme Court of California

Counsel

• For Appellees:
  
• Michael J. Hersek, State Public Defender, under appointment by the Supreme Court, and Robin Kallman, Deputy State Public Defender, for Defendant and Appellant., Bill Lockyer and Edmund G. Brown, Jr., Attorneys General, Robert R. Anderson, Chief Assistant Attorney General, Gary W. Schons, Assistant Attorney General, William M. Wood and Arlene Aquintey Sevidal, Deputy Attorneys General, for Plaintiff and Respondent.