Rejecting a claim of juror misconduct, a 5-2 Supreme Court today denies habeas corpus relief to a death row prisoner in In re Manriquez.
At the penalty phase of his trial, the prisoner — whose death sentence was affirmed by the court on direct automatic appeal in 2005 — presented mitigation evidence that he had suffered prolonged severe abuse as a child on a ranch in rural Mexico. The foreperson of the jury that convicted him and recommended the death penalty didn’t think those circumstances merited mercy. After all, she wrote, she had similarly suffered prolonged severe abuse, including rape and slave labor, as a child on a farm, yet “I am successful in my career and am a very responsible Law abiding citizen. It is a matter of choice!” Problem was that she didn’t mention her history and views until after the trial was over and, in a pretrial questionnaire, she answered that she had never experienced violence.
Going along with a superior court judge/referee’s findings, the majority opinion by Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye holds the juror’s delayed disclosure doesn’t require vacating the death sentence, even though the failure to accurately answer the pretrial questionnaire was misconduct. The court concludes that “the referee reasonably accepted her explanation that she did not consider her childhood experiences when answering” the questionnaire; her explanation was that, when she was growing up in the 1950’s, “abuse was not a crime. Kids were abused all the time. And using kids for hard labor was very common.” The court also finds the prisoner “has not shown a substantial likelihood that [the juror] was actually biased” because “the record before us does not show that her childhood experiences made her predisposed to vote for the death penalty in petitioner’s case.”
Justice Goodwin Liu and pro tem Justice Donald Franson, Jr., on the other hand, write dissents and sign each other’s opinions. Both conclude there is a substantial likelihood the juror was actually biased against the petitioner. Justice Liu writes that habeas relief from the death penalty is additionally required because,”[h]ad [the juror] revealed her prior experiences and disposition toward those experiences, any competent counsel would have struck her from the jury with a peremptory challenge.”
