The Supreme Court today affirms the death penalty in People v. Barrett for a 1996 stabbing murder of a cellmate by a prisoner who was already serving a life sentence for a prior murder. The jury had rejected the defendant’s claim of self defense.
The court’s unanimous 214-page opinion (long, even by capital appeal standards; then again, the parties’ briefs, not including supplemental briefing, covered about 1,100 pages) by Justice Joshua Groban rejects many defense arguments. Among them are some issues in interesting juxtaposition.
One argument that didn’t succeed was a Batson/Wheeler claim that the prosecution racially discriminated in peremptorily challenging a Black prospective juror. On the other hand, the defendant asserted prosecutorial misconduct in cross-examining him about his white supremacist beliefs, and he objected to evidence of a previous crime just prior to which he called three Black men the n-word. The court dismisses the latter two arguments on harmlessness grounds.
The court also finds other cross-examination of the defendant to have been misconduct, but not prejudicial. “[S]ome of the prosecutor’s questions were seemingly meant only to goad defendant,” the opinion says, and “[w]e do not condone such tactics.” “However,” the court concludes, “the prosecutor’s errors did not render defendant’s trial unfair nor were they meant to improperly persuade the jury.”
