Supreme Court of California

Petition for habeas corpus relief in a murder case is granted and the death sentence is vacated, and petitioner is allowed to withdraw his guilty plea, where the prosecution failed to timely disclose several items of evidence that tended to rebut a key prosecution penalty phase witness, and that contradicted the prosecutor's suggestion in his penalty phase closing argument that evidence indicating it was really another individual who killed a victim "didn't exist."

Appellate Information

• Decided 05/05/2008
• Published 05/05/2008

Judges

• WERDEGAR, J.

Court

• Supreme Court of California

Counsel

• For Appellant:
  
• Kerry R. Bensinger, Pasadena, George R. Hedges and David Pettit, Los Angeles, under appointments by the Supreme Court, for Petitioner Adam Miranda.


• For Appellees:
  
• Daniel E. Lungren, Bill Lockyer and Edmund G. Brown, Jr., Attorneys General, George Williamson and David P. Druliner, Chief Assistant Attorneys General, Carol Wendelin Pollack, Assistant Attorney General, Sanjay T. Kumar, Robert S. Henry, Frederick Grab, Pamela C. Hamanaka, Susan Lee Frierson, Donald E. de Nicola, James William Bilderback II, Michael A. Katz and J. Michael Lehmann, Deputy Attorneys General, for Respondent State of California.