U.S. High Court to Hear ’62 Murder Case Appeal

The U.S. Supreme Court, agreeing to hear an appeal from California authorities, said Monday it would decide whether a former ranch hand convicted 23 years ago of the murder of a teen-age girl is entitled to a new trial.

The court announced that it would review a 1983 ruling by a federal judge that overturned the conviction of Booker T. Hillery Jr. on the grounds that blacks were purposely excluded from the Kings County Grand Jury that indicted him in 1962. Hillery, who is black, is now serving a life sentence for the murder of 15-year-old Marlene Miller of Hanford.

California Atty. Gen. John K. Van de Kamp sought the review of the ruling, noting that prosecutors had said it would be “virtually impossible” to retry a case that is more than two decades old. Even if it is possible, it would only revive the “grief, suffering and agony” of the victim’s family, Van de Kamp said.

Black Residents

The state’s appeal noted that the indictment of Hillery came at a time when blacks made up only about 5% of Kings County’s population and when residency and occupational requirements made it difficult to form a racially diverse grand jury. In more recent times, blacks have served as grand jurors in the county, it said.

Whatever the makeup of the grand jury in 1962, the state said, there was no evidence that Hillery did not receive a fair trial. His guilt, it said, was “overwhelming and uncontroverted.”

Hillery was free on parole on a previous conviction of rape and was working at a nearby ranch when he was charged with sexually assaulting and stabbing the Miller girl. Her body was found near her home in rural Hanford.

Sentenced to Death

Hillery was convicted and sentenced to death, but the sentence was overturned in 1965 by the California Supreme Court. He received two more death sentences, but those, too, were overturned and his sentence eventually was commuted to life imprisonment.

In 1983, U.S. District Judge Lawrence K. Karlton in Sacramento overturned the murder conviction, saying that the systematic exclusion of blacks violated the integrity of the judicial process. One year later, a panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco upheld the decision in a 2-1 ruling.

The Supreme Court agreed to hear the state’s appeal in a brief order (Vasquez vs. Hillery, 84-836). The case is likely to be heard by the court next fall.