In Walker v. Davis, a divided Ninth Circuit panel yesterday ordered habeas corpus relief for a death row inmate whose capital sentence for a 1979 robbery-murder and other crimes the California Supreme Court affirmed in 1988 (People v. Walker (1988) 47 Cal.3d 605). The affirmance, which the Ninth Circuit now calls “objectively unreasonable,” was on rehearing after the Supreme Court had initially reversed just the death penalty (People v. Walker (1985) 222 Cal.Rptr. 169). The court also denied two state habeas corpus petitions, 28 and 16 years ago.
The federal court majority, in an unpublished memorandum, held the petitioner’s conviction couldn’t stand because of the prosecutor’s racially discriminatory peremptory challenges of prospective jurors. This despite applying what it said was, for Batson claims like the one before it, a “ ‘ “doubly deferential” ’ ” standard of review: “ ‘ “unless the state appellate court was objectively unreasonable in concluding that a trial court’s credibility determination [of the prosecutor’s stated peremptory challenge reasons] was supported by substantial evidence, we must uphold it.” ’ ”
The panel concluded the Supreme Court’s opinion didn’t get over that low bar because the prosecutor’s reasons were inadequate and the opinion “simply restated, without any analysis, the prosecutor’s proffered reasons for striking all of the black potential jurors, . . . including reasons that even the trial court had rejected.”
The Ninth Circuit usually, but not always, refuses to overturn California Supreme Court death penalty decisions.
Related:
“From the bench, an ‘impotent silence’.”
Former Justice Werdegar named to work group studying discriminatory jury selection practices
Bill would address discriminatory jury selection, a disputed issue at the Supreme Court
Another Justice Liu dissent on a Batson issue as Supreme Court affirms death sentence
