Death Sentence Reversed in ’79 Double Murder

The state Supreme Court today unanimously reversed a conviction and death sentence in a Los Angeles County double murder, ruling that the prosecutor systematically removed blacks from the jury.

The ruling grants a new trial to Melvin Turner, who had been convicted of murdering a surgeon and a schoolteacher who were bound, gagged and shot in the head inside an airport hangar in Torrance in July, 1979.

The court said Turner was denied his constitutional right to trial by a representative jury because the prosecutor challenged all three blacks on the panel and failed to give plausible reasons to rebut a conclusion that they were removed because of their race.

Mosk Writes Opinion

The opinion was written by Justice Stanley Mosk, who was also the author of the court’s landmark 1978 decision that jurors cannot be removed because of their race. The U.S. Supreme Court, which had earlier reached a contrary conclusion, reversed itself this year and also banned racially motivated jury challenges.

“The record demonstrates that the prosecutor used his peremptory challenges to strike black prospective jurors in a racially discriminatory manner for the apparent purpose of obtaining an all-white jury to try this black defendant for crimes against white victims,” Mosk said.

He also said Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Thomas Fredericks had failed to evaluate carefully the prosecutor’s explanations for his actions, as required by law.