The Supreme Court today affirms the death sentence in People v. Johnson for a defendant whose behavior during trial “conveyed a disregard for courtroom norms as persistent as it was severe.” The court’s unanimous opinion by Justice Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar concludes that “defendant’s repeated efforts to compromise the integrity of a capital trial were unsuccessful.” The appeal follows the defendant’s conviction of two murders at his second trial, the first one having ended with a hung jury.
After violently attacking his own attorney at the beginning of jury selection, among other things, the defendant was removed from the courtroom. The court says, “The exclusion of a capital defendant from his own trial is unusual, but not unprecedented,” and it finds the superior court’s action to have been a proper exercise of discretion. The Supreme Court also rejects numerous other appellate arguments by the defendant, including finding to be harmless the superior court’s error in failing to give a required instruction.
