Actions of note at yesterday’s Supreme Court conference — the third double one in a row — included:
- Supreme Court lets stand ruling upholding restaurant dining ban.
- Supreme Court approves one pardon, seven sentence commutations; all were on the docket for shorter times than one still pending over a year.
- The court granted review in Souliotes v. California Victim Compensation Board. The Second District, Division Four, published opinion held that a federal court’s finding of a defendant’s “actual innocence,” which allows a habeas corpus petition to proceed despite an otherwise applicable time bar, is not equivalent to “factual innocence” under state law, which requires the Victim Compensation Board to approve a wrongly convicted person’s monetary claim. The case might test the Supreme Court’s anti-textualist leanings (see here and here), as the appellate court based its ruling on “the expressed language” of a 2016 statutory change despite conceding that the amendment’s sponsors “may have intended” a different result. And/or Souliotes might see the Supreme Court revisit its 2017 decision in Dhillon v. John Muir Health (2017) 2 Cal.5th 1109 concerning the appealability of superior court orders reviewing administrative proceedings, an issue the appellate court addressed at length. The Supreme Court so far has not “specif[ied] the issues to be briefed and argued.”
[June 11 update: It looks like the court might not be interested in the appealability issue. The newly published, court-staff-drafted issues for the case are: “(1) Does a federal court’s ‘gateway’ finding of actual innocence (Schlup v. Delo (1995) 513 U.S. 298) satisfy the ‘factually innocent’ standard of Penal Code section 1485.55, subdivision (a), for entitlement to compensation by a person wrongfully convicted and incarcerated? (2) Are the factual findings and credibility determinations made in a federal court’s Schlup order binding on state courts under Penal Code section 1485.5, subdivision (c)?”]
- Justice Goodwin Liu issued another separate statement on the denial of review (see here), this one in People v. Jackson. The Fourth District, Division One, published opinion concluded the defendant — who was sentenced to life without parole for murders committed when he was 19 — didn’t have his equal protection rights violated by a statute denying him access to a parole eligibility procedure that is available to other “youth offenders” convicted of similarly serious crimes. Justice Liu, reprising his January separate statement in People v. Montelongo, said the exclusion “is in tension with equal protection of the laws” because “ ‘the mitigating attributes of youth are not “crime-specific.” ’ ” He did not vote for review, however, instead joining what he said were “at least 11 justices of the Court of Appeal [who] have called for legislative reconsideration” of the statute.
- Over Justice Carol Corrigan’s dissenting recorded vote, the court denied review in People v. Sanders, where the Fifth District, in an unpublished opinion, reversed a life-without-parole sentence because it concluded the evidence was insufficient as a matter of law to support the defendant’s murder and attempted murder convictions. The appellate court concluded that a surveillance camera recording of the shooting of the two victims “raises clear reasonable doubt that Sanders was the direct perpetrator of these crimes, and the remaining circumstantial evidence does not reasonably establish that he was the gunman.” The opinion further stated, “Based on principles of double jeopardy, retrial is barred.”
- There were 27 criminal case grant-and-holds: seven more holding for a decision in People v. Lewis (see here), which was argued last month; five more holding for People v. Lopez (see here); four more holding for People v. Strong (see here); one more holding for People v. Duke (see here); two more holding for Lewis and Lopez; one more holding for Lewis and Strong; one more holding for Lewis and Duke (that’s a total of 285 Lewis grant-and-holds); two more holding for People v. Renteria (see here and here); two more holding for People v. Delgadillo (see here); and two more holding for People v. Raybon (see here), which was argued last month.
- The court dumped eight grant-and-holds, three that had been waiting for its May decision in People v. Vivar (2021) 11 Cal.5th 510 (review was dismissed in one and the other two were sent back to the Courts of Appeal for reconsideration) and five that had been waiting for its April opinion in In re A.R. (2021) 11 Cal.5th 234 (all five were returned for reconsideration).