The Ninth Circuit today affirmed a district court denial of habeas corpus relief in Clark v. Broomfield. The unsuccessful petitioner, dubbed the Sunset Slasher, is a condemned prisoner whose death sentence the California Supreme Court affirmed over three decades ago in a 5-2 decision. (People v. Clark (1992) 3 Cal.4th 41.) (The Supreme Court also denied a host of state habeas petitions.) The series of murders in issue occurred in 1980.
The rejected habeas claims involve adverse representation rulings, regarding both self-representation and the right to change appointed counsel. Even though disagreeing with upholding the judgment, one of the Supreme Court dissenters — Justice Joyce Kennard — wrote about the self-representation issue that the trial “was a judge’s nightmare: an extremely complex multiple-murder case in which an obstreperous, manipulative defendant insisted on exercising his constitutional right to represent himself.”
The Ninth Circuit panel applied a highly deferential standard in reviewing the district court’s review of the Supreme Court’s decision, writing, “the district court correctly concluded that the California Supreme Court’s decision was not, in any respect, contrary to or an unreasonable application of clearly established federal law as determined by the United States Supreme Court.”
The Ninth Circuit usually, but not always, refuses to overturn Supreme Court death penalty affirmances.
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