The Supreme Court yesterday denied a pro per’s habeas corpus petition in In re Aubry with Justice Joshua Groban, joined by Justices Goodwin Liu and Kelli Evans, issuing a concurring statement. The petition sought relief under the California Racial Justice Act (here and here), but the separate statement focuses mainly on a sentence the superior court reluctantly imposed despite believing it to be too high.
According to the denial order, the petition claimed “the San Bernardino County Superior Court has engaged in a practice of sentencing African American defendants more severely than similarly situated defendants of other races, ethnicities, or national origins.” The Supreme Court found the claim was not supported by sufficient allegations or documentary evidence, “such as statistical evidence, aggregate data, or nonstatistical evidence demonstrating similarly situated defendants of other races, ethnicities, or national origins received more lenient sentences than petitioner.”
The concurring statement agrees the RJA violation claim was not adequately supported. Instead, it points out that the superior court judge said about the sentence they were required to impose, “This is one of those cases where our system in my humble opinion . . . is woeful.” The petitioner was sentenced to 25 years to life for driving under the influence. The sentence was a high one because the petitioner had three prior strike convictions from killing three people while drunk driving 17 years earlier.
The statement says its purpose is “to highlight that our denial of the petition does not necessarily preclude Aubry from obtaining relief at some point in the future.” It then lists some possible avenues for relief, mostly concerning the stiff sentence. The statement concludes, “The Legislature also might consider solutions to address the problem identified by the trial court, whereby the only available options for sentencing were either a six-year term or a 25-year-to-life sentence. As the trial court suggested, perhaps there should be room for a ‘middle ground.’ ”
