A federal appeals court has overturned the conviction and death penalty of a man for three San Diego murders, saying he was denied a chance to argue the trial was tainted by racial prejudice.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday ordered Hector Ayala freed unless prosecutors plan to retry him in a reasonable amount of time.
The killings occurred during a 1985 robbery. At trial, the prosecution excused all seven black and Hispanic jurors who might have served.
Ayala's counsel challenged those rejections but the judge found they were based on "race-neutral" reasons.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruling in Ayala v. Wong is available in Adobe .pdf format. Related posts are in the race category index.
Batson challenges grow from the 1986 Supreme Court ruling in Batson v. Kentucky: more via Oyez.
Additional Batson resources includes coverage of a 2011 University of Iowa College of Law symposium, Batson at 25, as well as an Equal Justice Initiative 2010 report on race and jury selection.
Also from California, "Calif. Guard's Killing Becoming Test Case," by Michael Doyle of MCT News Service. It's via the San Diego Union-Tribune.
The 2008 killing of a prison guard in the Central Valley prison in Atwater has prompted the latest challenge to the federal death penalty as cruel and unusual punishment.The sweeping legal challenge seems like a long shot, especially with a conservative majority controlling the U.S. Supreme Court. The challenge, however, elevates the slaying of California correctional officer Jose Rivera by two intoxicated prisoners into the realm of constitutional conflict, a place where justices often struggle.
“There’s some value to alerting the judge to these constitutional issues,” Richard C. Dieter, the executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, said in an interview. “These broaden things, and get the court thinking about these other issues.”
And:
On Monday, defense attorneys for Joseph Cabrera Sablan asked a U.S. District Court judge to declare the federal death penalty in violation of the Eighth Amendment. Sablan and fellow inmate James Ninete Leon Guerrero are charged with first-degree murder in correctional officer Jose Rivera’s death. Sablan and Leon Guerrero have pleaded not guilty, although it’s really the potential punishment rather than the underlying crime they’re contesting.
“Persons convicted of the premeditated murders of (more than) 100 victims have received sentences less than death; contract killers with double-digit numbers of victims have received sentences less than death,” Sablan’s defense attorneys wrote. “To impose death in this case of an unpremeditated killing of a single man by two drunken inmates is arbitrary and capricious.”
Related posts are in the federal death penalty category index.
Earlier coverage from California begins at the link.
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