A 5-2 Supreme Court today affirmed the death penalty in People v. Mataele for a 1997 murder and attempted murder of two people the court says were, with the defendant and others, part of “a criminal enterprise” involved in “an ongoing identity theft and bank fraud scheme” and which later “included the purchase and sale of methamphetamine.” The court did, however, remand the case for the superior court to consider striking two sentence enhancements under legislation enacted after the defendant’s trial.
The justices disagreed whether the erroneous exclusion of penalty phase evidence was harmless. A witness who was not located until after the guilt phase concluded, when questioned by the police at the crime scene, described the shooter as being physically quite different than the defendant.
The court’s opinion by Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye acknowledged the evidence would have been relevant because “a jury determination that the defendant is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt does not preclude a jury from entertaining lingering or residual doubt as to the nature or extent of the defendant’s guilt.” It even disapproved contrary language in a prior opinion, In re Gay (1998) 19 Cal.4th 771, 814. But the court concluded, “there is no reasonable possibility that the additional testimony defendant could have elicited from [the witness] would have affected the jury’s verdict at the penalty phase.”
Justice Goodwin Liu on the other hand, writing for himself and Justice Leondra Kruger, explained why “the error was of the sort that ‘may have led a single juror to vote for the death penalty, who, if the error had not occurred, would not have done so.’ ” He concurred in the affirmance of the defendant’s conviction.
The court expressed no opinion regarding “whether defendant was prejudiced by defense counsel’s failure to secure [the witness’s] appearance at the guilt phase trial.” Justice Joshua Groban separately concurred to express his belief that “a habeas corpus proceeding would be the appropriate forum to explore such a claim.”
As is typical in death penalty appeals, where the court must hear the case and cannot pick and choose which issues it will decide, the court rejected numerous other defense arguments, including that two prospective jurors were improperly dismissed for their personal views against the death penalty and that the four-year gap between the crimes’ occurrence and defendant being charged was unjustified and prejudiced his defense. The court did find error in failing to give an instruction sua sponte, but concluded the omission was not prejudicial.
