State Supreme Court Upsets Death Sentence

A divided California Supreme Court today overturned the death sentence and murder conviction of Vincent Louis in the 1980 shotgun killing of a Monrovia gas station attendant.

Louis was denied the right to confront a prosecution witness, who disappeared after testifying in earlier trials against three other suspects in the case.

The presence of the witness for cross-examination would have “spelled the difference between life and death,” Justice Stanley Mosk wrote in the 4-3 majority opinion. Among the majority was outgoing Chief Justice Rose Elizabeth Bird.

Mosk said the witness, Gregory Tolbert, was called “one of the flakiest, most unreliable witnesses that the court has come in contact with” by the trial judge in Los Angeles.

Three co-defendants in the killing of gas station attendant Thomas Walker were tried separately. They went free. Only Louis was convicted and sentenced to death.

The only difference in the two trials was that Tolbert appeared to testify in the trial of the three co-defendants. He fled prior to the Louis trial and his earlier testimony was read to jurors.

Justice Edward Panelli wrote a dissent to today’s opinion. He was joined by Justice Malcolm Lucas, in line to be the court’s next chief justice, and Justice Joseph Grodin.