The Supreme Court today affirms the death sentence in People v. Bracamontes for the 1991 murder of a nine-year-old girl in San Diego. The defendant was arrested in 2003 after a cold-case investigation.
The court’s unanimous opinion — at 41 pages, a short one for a capital case — is by Justice Carol Corrigan. As is typical in death penalty appeals, the opinion rejects multiple arguments for reversal. One unsuccessful claim is that the 12-year delay between the murder and the charging of the defendant prejudicially deprived him of evidence that would have helped his case.
Stating that “physical restraints are considered extraordinary measures,” the court does conclude the superior court abused its discretion in ordering the defendant to wear leg chains during his trial, but it finds the error harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. The court points to a skimpy record of whether jurors saw the restraints — “[a]ll that can be established is that, for an unspecified period of time during voir dire, some prospective jurors may have seen a portion of the ‘wire’ used in the [shackling] system” — and to what it says was the prosecution’s strong evidence.
