The Supreme Court today affirms the death sentence for a 1981 murder in People v. Burgener. One reason for the long delay between crime and affirmance is that this is the fourth time the defendant’s case is before the court. In 1986, the court affirmed the conviction, but reversed the death penalty; in 2003 and 2009, the court reversed the penalty two more times. (Last year, the court affirmed a death sentence for a 1979 murder. The delay there, however, was because the defendant wasn’t even charged until 2002.)
The court’s unanimous opinion, authored by Justice Goodwin Liu, rejects the defendant’s claim that the trial court erred in allowing him to represent himself at a hearing on his motion to modify the penalty verdict. (The court’s 2009 reversal was because the trial court had not adequately warned the defendant of the risks of self-representation at an earlier hearing on the same motion.)