The Supreme Court today affirms the death sentence in People v. Powell (Carl Devon). The defendant, when he was 18 years old, robbed and murdered his former boss, the owner of a Kentucky Fried Chicken store. The court’s unanimous opinion is by Acting Chief Justice Carol Corrigan. (Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye was recused.)
An unusual circumstance of the case was that defense counsel disclosed pretrial that the defendant would testify to implicate his two co-defendants, but the defendant himself later decided not to take the stand. Based on counsel’s initial assurances, the prosecution told the jury in opening statements about the defendant’s promised upcoming testimony. Among many other rejected arguments, the defendant claimed that, as summarized by the court, “the prosecutor’s ‘false promise’ of his testimony invited the jury to draw an adverse inference from his silence.”
