U.S. High Court Questions State Death Rulings

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday ordered California’s high court to reconsider one of its death penalty reversals, and called into question the state court’s most sweeping death penalty rulings since capital punishment was reinstated by the state Legislature.

In a brief order Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court vacated the state court’s ruling in the case of Bernard Lee Hamilton, whose death sentence was reversed on New Year’s Eve.

The U.S. court told the state justices to reconsider the Hamilton case in light of the federal court’s ruling last week that a murderer’s sentence need not be overturned simply because trial judges give jurors faulty instructions about the law.

The U.S. Supreme Court, acting in a Tennessee murder case last Wednesday, had said appellate courts can conclude that faulty and even unconstitutional jury instructions are “harmless” errors.

That so-called harmless error standard is far looser than the standard used by the state Supreme Court. Relying on their own rulings that juries must be instructed on the need to prove intent to kill before a sentence of death or life in prison without parole can be imposed, state justices have overturned 15 death sentences in the last two years.

Among the reversals are cases in which defendants were convicted of murdering as many as three people or, as in Hamilton’s case, where the victim was badly mutilated.

Hamilton was convicted of killing Eleanore Frances Buchanan, a young mother and college student whose body was discovered in May, 1979, in a grassy area of a cul-de-sac near San Diego. The body was found without a head or hands.

100 Sentences

The state court noted that the cause of death was never determined, and so it was not clear beyond doubt that the murder was intentional. Jurors might have concluded the death was accidental and Hamilton, a parolee, mutilated the body afterward to conceal the victim’s identity, the court said.

The state attorney general’s office decided to appeal the Hamilton case after seeing the state justices’ opinions sharply divided over whether they were required to follow their strict state standard or whether the looser, federal harmless error standard would suffice.

The attorney general has estimated that unless the state court reverses its earlier intent-to-kill rulings, more than 100 sentences of death and life in prison without parole will be thrown out.

Parties to the controversy disagreed about the significance of the U.S. Supreme Court’s order.

“It seems to me it is a pretty strong direction” that the state court rethink its position, Deputy Atty. Gen. Pat Wilkinson said of the U.S. Supreme Court’s order Monday.

Such orders “can be a pretty strong hint,” Wilkinson said, but he noted the state court does not have to reverse itself based on the U.S. Supreme Court’s order. State courts can give defendants greater but not lesser protections than allowed under federal law.

‘Do Not Always Take Hint’

“They have shown that they do not always take the hint,” said Wilkinson, recently appointed coordinator of death penalty cases for the state attorney general.

A similar situation arose in 1980 when the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the state court to reconsider a death penalty reversal. The state court simply concluded that its ruling was correct and the decision stood.

“It’s hard to read too much into it,” said Michael Millman, head of the California Appellate Project, which coordinates the defense of death penalty appeals in the state.

“The fact that there is an order vacating and remanding (the Hamilton case) does not mean any more than they are saying, ‘Here is our latest relevant pronouncement.’ ”

As a result of Monday’s order, the state Supreme Court is expected to call on lawyers involved in Hamilton’s case to provide them with written arguments analyzing the Tennessee case and applying it to California law.

Intent-to-Kill Issue

The intent-to-kill issue stems from an omission in California’s 1978 death penalty statute, which did not require a finding that a murder was intentional before death or life without parole could be imposed.

In a 1983 case, the state Supreme Court rewrote the law to require that intent to kill be proved. Then in 1984, the court said its 1983 ruling would apply to all pending cases, unless one of four narrow exceptions existed.

So far, the court has applied these narrow exceptions to only a handful of cases. However, the court has reversed those cases for other reasons.