Agreeing with the Attorney General’s concession, the Supreme Court today orders the acquittal of one defendant who was convicted of a drive-by shooting murder. The court’s unanimous opinion by Justice Goodwin Liu in People v. Rodriguez and Barajas holds that — based on its prior opinion in People v. Romero & Self — uncorroborated accomplice testimony was insufficient to support the defendant’s conviction and it explains that the double jeopardy clauses of the federal and state constitutions require acquittal when a reversal is based on insufficiency of the evidence.
The second defendant in the case gets only marginal relief — a remand for a Franklin hearing so he can make a better record for a youthful offender parole hearing in 25 years. But he’s lucky to get even that because he didn’t file his own petition for review in the Supreme Court. The court concludes that granting the co-defendant’s petition for review “gave us jurisdiction over the cause, including [the non-petitioning defendant’s] claim, and we exercise our jurisdiction to consider it.” Practice note:
Don’t rely solely on a co-party’s petition for review; file your own. As the court noted today, “while we have authority to consider such claims, we do not do so as a matter of course; in general, parties are advised to file a petition for review on claims that may entitle them to relief in this court.”
The court reverses the Fifth District Court of Appeal. This is the second time the court granted review in this case, the first time transferring the case back to the appellate court for reconsideration in light of two new opinions.
