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| High Court rules against Calif. death row inmate |
| By Reuters |
| Published: 03/28/2005 |
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The U.S. Supreme Court ruled last Tuesday against a California death row inmate who argued that the jury at sentencing should have been told to consider evidence of his religious conversion after the killing. By a 5-3 vote, the justices overturned a U.S. appeals court ruling that set aside William Payton's death sentence. He was convicted for the 1980 stabbing death of Pamela Montgomery in Garden Grove, California, and for related crimes. The appeals court had ruled that jurors should have been told by the trial judge that they could consider evidence of his conversion to Christianity. It overturned a California Supreme Court decision that had upheld Payton's death sentence. Payton's defense attorneys presented the jury with testimony from eight witnesses about his conversion after the murder and about the sincerity of his religious commitment. The attorneys argued at the time and in the Supreme Court appeal that the California sentencing scheme restricted the jury's consideration of that mitigating evidence. At the sentencing, the prosecutor incorrectly told the jury that any mitigating evidence could apply to anything at the time of the crime that somehow reduced the gravity of what the defendant did, but not "to anything after the fact or later." The judge told the jury that they could consider "any other circumstance which extenuates the gravity of the crime." The judge rejected a defense request to instruct the jury that they also should consider mitigating evidence after the crime, such as the defendant's character. In last Tuesday's 13-page opinion, Justice Anthony Kennedy said for the majority that the appeals court was wrong in ruling for Payton. He said it was reasonable for the state court to rule that the jury most likely believed the mitigating evidence was simply too insubstantial to overcome the arguments for imposing the death penalty. "Testimony about a religious conversion spanning one year and nine months may well have been considered altogether insignificant in light of the brutality of the crimes, the prior offenses and a proclivity for committing violent acts against women," Kennedy said. Justices John Paul Stevens, David Souter and Ruth Bader Ginsburg dissented from the ruling. |
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