Supreme Court Considers Hearing Case of Death Row Inmate
November 02, 2009
By David G. Savage
WASHINGTON The U.S. Supreme Court is considering, for the third time, the case of a California murderer who was sentenced to die in 1982 for the brutal killing of a young woman in the state's central valley.
Twenty years ago, the California Supreme Court affirmed a death sentence for Fernando Belmontes, but since then, his case has bounced back and forth in the federal courts. Three times in this decade, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has overturned his death sentence as flawed.
The case is the latest skirmish in the long-running war between California prosecutors and the 9th Circuit over the death penalty, and it helps explains the oddity of capital punishment in California. While death sentences are common, executions are rare.
California has by far the largest death row in the nation, with 685 inmates. Yet, only 13 condemned prisoners have been executed since capital punishment was restored in 1977, far fewer than the 38 death-row inmates who have died of natural causes.
By contrast, Texas has carried out 441 executions during the same time and has 358 inmates on Death Row. Though a much smaller state, Virginia has executed 103 murderers during that time and has only 18 inmates serving death sentences. Among them is John Allen Muhammad, who is scheduled to die on Nov. 10 for one in a series of sniper shootings in the Washington area in the fall of 2002.
The stark differences in execution rates reflect the contrasting approaches of the regional U.S. courts of appeals. In the South, the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals based in Richmond, Virginia and the 5th Circuit based in New Orleans are dominated by conservative judges who are inclined to reject appeals and to uphold death sentences.
The 9th Circuit, based in San Francisco, has a core of liberal judges who say it is their duty to carefully scrutinize capital cases.
"There is no greater burden than falls on a member of the judiciary than to sit in judgment on whether an individual shall live or die, and no greater responsibility than to make certain that every capital defendant receives the full protection to which he is entitled to under our Constitution and our laws," said Judge Stephen Reinhardt of Los Angeles, defending his decision to set aside Belmontes' death sentence again.
In a 2-1 decision last year, Reinhart and Judge Richard Paez, also of Los Angeles, ruled the lawyer for Belmontes provided "ineffective assistance of counsel" because he failed to tell the jury of the "traumas that Belmontes faced as a youth." Given this evidence, the jury might have spared his life, they said.
Eight conservative judges of the 9th Circuit dissented and said the full appeals court should reconsider this ruling. However, it takes a majority vote of the circuit's 27 judges to re-hear such a case.
In 1981, Belmontes broke in the home of 19-year old Steacy McConnell and beat her to death with a bar bell. He stole a stereo and sold it for $100.
In two earlier rulings, Reinhart and Paez overturned the death sentence for Belmontes on the grounds jurors might have thought they could not consider his conversion to Christianity in prison as a reason for leniency. Police and prosecutors said Belmontes had shot and killed a man two years earlier, but this evidence was kept from the jury.
After each of these rulings overturning his death sentence, the California attorney general appealed to the Supreme Court. Twice before, the justices set aside the 9th Circuit's decision, once in brief order and once in a full opinion.
Originally published by David G. Savage; Chicago Tribune.
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