The Supreme Court yesterday denied a pro per’s petition for review in In re Mency, following a summary denial of a habeas corpus petition by the Second District, Division Four, Court of Appeal. But Justices Goodwin Liu and Kelli Evans recorded dissenting votes and also issued a separate statement, authored by Justice Liu. The petitions sought relief under California’s Racial Justice Act (here and here) for alleged racial disparities in criminal sentencing, an issue about which the court has often required superior court hearings in the past. (See: Supreme Court sets up possible trials on systemic racism in California’s criminal justice system.)
The Supreme Court’s order says the denial is “without prejudice to any relief to which petitioner might be entitled after this court decides In re Montgomery,” in which the court granted review (see here) to decide the issue (as summarized by court staff (see here)), “Must a petitioner allege a prima facie case for relief under the Racial Justice Act (Pen. Code, § 745; RJA) before the trial court can consider a discovery request for disclosure of evidence under the RJA (id., subd. (d))?” The Court of Appeal’s denial order similarly said “the availability of [RJA] discovery in habeas cases is on review in In re Montgomery.”
Mency’s habeas petition and petition for review raised numerous claims, but the dissenters said they wanted the court to issue an order to show cause — presumably returnable before a superior court — only as whether Mency is entitled to appointment of counsel under the RJA. Justices Liu and Evans thinks he is, based on his presentation of “uncontroverted statewide data showing significant racial disparities in sentencing Black defendants to [life without parole], along with data showing even greater disparities in sentencing Black youth to LWOP.”
The dissenting statement says, “Notably, Mency was charged and sentenced during the era of the ‘superpredator myth,’ which has left a ‘legacy of dehumanization and harm against Black and Brown youth,’ ” quoting from Justice Evans’s dissent in People v. Hardin (2024) 15 Cal.5th 834 (see here).
The Mency dissenting statement is at least the third by Justices Liu and Evans in matters raising similar RJA issues. (See here and here.) Yesterday’s statement notes that, in amending the RJA, the Legislature very recently cited one of those past dissenting statements — in In re Mendoza — as “accurately articulat[ing] the Legislature’s intent in passing the RJA and concern about its silent evisceration.”
