Court Upholds Crucial Part of Death Penalty

The state Supreme Court reversed the death sentence of a Riverside man today but upheld a crucial provision of the state’s 1978 death penalty law.

The provision said a jury “shall” recommend a death sentence, instead of life without parole, if it decides that aggravating factors in the case, such as the viciousness of the crime and the defendant’s prior record, outweigh mitigating factors, like the defendant’s youth and personal problems.

Six of the justices, led by Joseph Grodin, said the language did not improperly prevent a jury from considering all circumstances of the case in deciding the sentence.

The seventh, Chief Justice Rose Elizabeth Bird, said the court should not have decided the issue because it was unnecessary to the outcome of the case.

The language upheld by the court was part of a 1978 initiative approved by voters to expand the state’s death penalty law. Edward O’Brien, coordinator of death penalty cases in the state attorney general’s office, said the jury instruction was used in at least 130 of the 170 pending death penalty cases.

In today’s case, the court voted 5 to 2 to reverse the death sentence of Albert Brown Jr. and allow a new penalty phase of the trial to decide between death and life without parole.

The court affirmed Brown’s conviction of first-degree murder of a 15-year-old girl who disappeared while walking to school from her Riverside home in October, 1980, and was raped and strangled.

In reversing the death sentence, Grodin cited Riverside County Superior Court Judge J. William Mortland’s instruction to the jury that it should not be swayed by sympathy for the defendant in choosing a sentence. The court ruled in 1983 that an “anti-sympathy” instruction improperly prevented the jury from considering all factors that might be relevant to a sentence.

It was the 39th death sentence that the court has reversed out of 42 it has considered since the state’s death penalty law was restored in 1977.