A partially divided Supreme Court last week affirmed the death penalty in People v. Stayner for the 1999 murders of a mother, her teenage daughter, and the daughter’s friend. Justice Evans agreed with upholding the conviction, but dissented as to the penalty.
As is typical in death penalty appeals, the court’s opinion by Chief Justice Patricia Guerrero rejects many, many defense arguments for reversal, including that incriminating statements were obtained in violation of defendant’s Miranda rights or after an improper arrest, that defense juror challenges were erroneously denied and prosecution challenges were erroneously granted, that the trial’s venue should have been changed, that fingerprint and arson evidence was improperly admitted, that the trial court wrongly excluded another man’s confession to the murders, and that there was prosecutorial and juror misconduct.
The primary disagreement between the majority and Justice Evans concerned the prosecutor, during the penalty phase of the trial, eliciting evidence from a defense expert that the Department of Corrections employs female staffers and then asking the jurors whether they “really want to take a chance and mortgage the futures, mortgage the lives of perhaps women correctional officers in the joint, just take a chance and give him the gift of leniency?” The trial court precluded the defense from recalling the expert to “testify about the specific conditions of confinement that would likely apply to defendant, including the security measures the prison would likely impose.”
Stating that “a defendant’s future dangerousness is one of the most significant (if not the most significant) of the factors juries consider in deciding whether to sentence a defendant to death,” Justice Evans asserted that the defendant “was wrongly prevented at the penalty phase trial from offering evidence to rebut the inference that he would pose a danger to female correctional officers, and then he was wrongly left defenseless when the prosecutor relied on that inference near the end of his closing argument to urge a verdict of death.” The majority, on the other hand, although admitting that the issue did “raise some concerns,” concluded any error was harmless because the defense had been able on redirect examination to attempt (albeit unsuccessfully) “to offer some evidence to rebut the inference defendant would be a danger to female correctional officers.”
