Yesterday, the Supreme Court upheld the conviction and death sentence in People v. Dunn for the 2006 crimes described this way by the court: “High on methamphetamine and angry over the breakup of his marriage, defendant Aaron Norman Dunn sped down a busy Elk Grove street one Saturday evening and shot bystanders with a 12-gauge shotgun. He killed two men, injured two others, and engaged in a shootout with the police.”
The defendant raised a number of appellate arguments, including that, because of extensive pretrial publicity, his trial should have been moved out of Sacramento County or Elk Grove residents should have been excluded from the jury; he should have been advised of his right — under the Vienna Convention and a California statute — to contact the Canadian consulate (born in Canada, he is a dual U.S.–Canadian citizen); his Miranda rights were violated by incriminating statements defendant made while hospitalized, in response to a police officer’s inquiries to a nurse; he shouldn’t have been shackled during trial; a victim’s sister in the courtroom intimidated some jurors (one juror reported being “a little creeped out” thinking the sister’s drawings during the trial included a sketch of the juror).
The court’s unanimous opinion by Justice Carol Corrigan rejected them all, in one case finding an assumed error was not prejudicial.
