Michael Flinner was sentenced to death for arranging the 2000 murder of his 18-year-old fiancée to collect on her $500,000 life insurance policy. The Supreme Court today rejected his appeal, in People v. Flinner.
The court’s unanimous opinion by Justice Leondra Kruger rejects a host of arguments, including some relating to Flinner’s pretrial detention far from the court and his defense team, a claim that his case should have been completely severed from the case against the man Flinner hired to commit the murder, alleged jury misconduct, and the asserted improper admission of evidence that, when he was buying flowers for his fiancée’s funeral, Flinner yelled at a woman driving by in a car, “Hey baby, I’m single now,”and laughed. The court did find that admitting portions of the hit man’s post-arrest confession did violate Flinner’s confrontation clause rights, but that the error was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.
As it has in recent death penalty opinions, including another one today, the court summarily dismissed a request to change the rule that juries are not required to make unanimous findings beyond a reasonable doubt on aggravating factors, despite the court’s signaling in the pending McDaniel appeal that it will reconsider the rule. (See here and, also, here.)
