The Supreme Court today affirms the death sentence in People v. Tran for a1995 torture murder committed during a burglary and robbery. The court’s unanimous opinion is by Justice Goodwin Liu.
As in many death penalty appeals, today’s decision rejects numerous arguments — including those involving jury selection issues, the refusal to sever the defendant’s case from a co-defendant’s, jury misconduct, instructional error, victim impact evidence, hearsay expert testimony in violation of Sanchez (see here), and whether the death penalty is appropriate for crimes committed by a 20-year-old — that don’t break much new ground. This is because, unlike in other cases, the court doesn’t have discretion to not hear a death penalty case or even to limit the issues it will decide.
However, one issue is of at least limited significance. The court made grant-and-hold orders in a number of non-capital cases (see here), having them wait for today’s interpretation of Assembly Bill 333, 2021 legislation that narrowed the circumstances in which a sentencing enhancement can be imposed for felonies “committed for the benefit of, at the direction of, or in association with a criminal street gang, with the specific intent to promote, further, or assist in criminal conduct by gang members.”
The court agrees that AB 333 requires reversal of the defendant’s gang enhancement (a point the Attorney General conceded), but not of the jury’s guilt or penalty determinations. However, it declines to resolve a split in Court of Appeal authority whether one part of the new law — requiring the enhancement charge to be tried only after a jury finds the defendant guilty of the underlying offense — is retroactive, because the court concludes the lack of a bifurcated trial on the enhancement was harmless as to the jury’s guilt and penalty findings.