The Supreme Court today affirms the three death penalties in People v. Holmes, McClain, and Newborn for the 1993 murder of three young teenagers who were mistaken for gang members. It’s not a unanimous decision, with disagreements over the use of stun belts on the defendants during the initial (hung) and retried penalty phases and the issue whether there was Batson error, i.e., the prosecution’s discrimination against Black women prospective jurors.
The five-justice majority’s 145-page opinion is by Justice Carol Corrigan. Finding both issues to be “close” ones, the court concludes that the superior court acted within its discretion in ordering stun belts and that the defendants had not made a prima facie showing of discrimination in the jury selection, a showing that would have required the prosecution to state, and the superior court to evaluate, a non-discriminatory reason for its peremptory challenges.
Justice Leondra Kruger writes separately on the stun-belt issue, stating, “In the absence of any express findings or explanation for the basis of the stun belt order, the majority does the only thing it can do, which is to comb the record for facts that would support an inference that the trial court made the necessary determinations of manifest need [for using stun belts].” She concludes the order is unsupported by the record, but concurs in the judgment because she believes nonetheless that the error was harmless. She feels the same way about the shackling of one defendant’s character witness.
Justice Goodwin Liu dissents. He also finds the stun belt order to be unsupported by the record, but, unlike Justice Kruger, he asserts the error was not harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. He also disagrees with the majority’s holding that the defendants did not make a prima facie showing of Batson error. Concluding the defendants “have met the low bar” of requiring the prosecution to justify its peremptory challenges, Justice Liu says that, “[i]n reaching a contrary judgment, today’s opinion weakens the role of appellate review in rooting out improper discrimination in jury selection.” Justice Liu is a frequent critic of the court’s Batson decisions. (See, e.g., here, here, and here.)
As is normal in direct, automatic death penalty appeals where the court cannot narrow the issues, there are many other arguments addressed, none of which prevail. Among other things, the court unanimously rejects claims that the defendants should not have been tried together, that one prospective juror was erroneously dismissed for cause because of uncertainty about her ability to vote for a death sentence, and that a witness was improperly detained overnight. The court also decides the prosecutor “improperly appealed to jurors’ fear of violence” during argument, but concludes the harm was sufficiently mitigated by the trial judge’s curative instruction, and it finds unavailing arguments related to one defendant’s self-representation during the penalty phase retrial.