Irony in the New Court

It would be hard to miss the irony in the first death-penalty ruling of the newly constituted California Supreme Court. The voters were so displeased by the string of death-penalty reversals by the previous court that they discharged three of its members last November, including the chief justice. In their place, Gov. George Deukmejian appointed John Arguelles, David Eagleson and Marcus Kaufman. But in the very first capital-punishment case to come before them, the court voted 7 to 0 to reverse the sentence of death.

It would be a mistake, though, to read too much into this turn of events. The error by the trial judge, Superior Court Judge Everett E. Ricks Jr. of Los Angeles, was so egregious in this case that no sane appellate justice could have voted to uphold the sentence.

Edgar M. Hendricks had been tried and convicted in 1983 for two homosexual murders in Hollywood. On the day he was to have been sentenced, the prosecution and defense lawyers remembered that no sanity hearing had been conducted. A separate jury was empaneled to rule on Hendricks’ sanity, but after jurors were unable to reach a verdict Ricks summarily reconvened the trial jury--five months after it had been dismissed, and without allowing any questioning of the jurors. The jury found Hendricks sane, and Ricks sentenced him to the gas chamber.

Reconvening a jury five months after it has been dismissed--during which the jurors were free to discuss the case, read about it, and so forth--is a “gross” and “incomprehensible” error, the Supreme Court found. To say the least. The Supreme Court had no choice. Ricks took a disability retirement from the bench last year, or the case would raise the question of his competence to remain a judge.

The reversal does not mean that Hendricks now gets off scot free. His case comes back for a new sanity hearing. He is also under a death sentence for two murders in San Francisco. That case is also being appealed.

The Supreme Court will have to decide other death-penalty cases before voters and the governor can decide whether it is carrying out their wishes. But its first case shows that this is still a government of laws and that the application of the death penalty remains a serious matter that demands the utmost care by the entire legal system.