Death Penalty Upheld for Slayer Who Asked for Execution

The state Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld the death penalty for a convicted murderer who asked to be executed, ruling that the defendant’s unusual request to the jury was not itself evidence of mental incompetence.

In a 5-2 decision, the justices rejected an appeal from Gary Lee Guzman, 43, who was found guilty of the 1980 rape, robbery and fatal stabbing of Linda G. Rodgers, a 22-year-old Modesto store clerk.

The court noted that Guzman, a twice-convicted rapist who had spent 19 of his previous 23 years in custody, had asked for the death penalty as an act of “mercy” because he could not face a return to the solitude and violence of prison life.

Under the circumstances, there was no need for the trial judge to order a psychiatric exam before allowing the defendant to make his death plea to jurors, the justices said.

” . . . It cannot be said that his mental competency was brought into question merely because he chose death over another 30 or 40 years in prison, with virtually no hope of ever being free again,” Chief Justice Malcolm M. Lucas wrote for the court.

Guzman’s reasons to preferring death over prison was evidence that his plea was “thoughtful and informed,” the court said, and he cannot claim on appeal that it improperly influenced the jury.

The justices held also that Guzman’s two trial lawyers, although objecting to his plea for death, properly acceded to his demand that they present no favorable character evidence to persuade jurors to return a verdict of life in prison without parole.

The defendant, while maintaining his innocence in the killing, presented such mitigating character evidence when he took the stand to describe his mistreatment as a youth, his efforts to gain an education, the skills he developed in prison as an artist and his thwarted bid to find employment while on parole, the court said.

Justices Stanley Mosk and Allen E. Broussard agreed that Guzman’s conviction should be upheld and joined in the court’s findings on the defendant’s request for the death penalty.

But both justices issued dissents contending that the sentence should be set aside because jurors were not properly informed of their heavy personal responsibilities in reaching a verdict and of their broad discretion not to vote for the death penalty unless they thought it was appropriate.

The ruling was the third of four capital decisions expected to be issued this week by a court that is still struggling to reduce its heavy backlog of capital cases--many of which have been pending for five years or more on automatic appeal.

The court has affirmed the death penalty in 26 of 34 capital cases it has decided since the departure of Chief Justice Rose Elizabeth Bird and two other justices defeated in the November, 1986, election. Nonetheless, there are 186 death cases pending before the court, representing nearly half of its total caseload.

Tuesday’s ruling followed two other decisions that involved attempts by defendants to convey their views to jurors in capital cases. It also produced a rare procedural embarrassment to the justices.

On Monday, the justices unanimously upheld the death penalty for Robert E. Grant, convicted of the murder of Edward Halbert in Shasta County in 1980.

Contentions Rejected

Among other things, the court rejected contentions by Grant’s attorneys that he should not have been allowed to tell the jury he preferred the death penalty to life without parole.

In ruling in Grant’s case, the court cited the Guzman ruling as part of the basis for its decision, overlooking the fact that the Guzman ruling had not yet been officially issued. Court officials quickly arranged for the case to be filed Tuesday.

In another decision Monday, the court unanimously affirmed the death penalty for Malcolm Joseph Robbins, convicted in the kidnaping and murder of 6-year-old Christopher Finney of Goleta in 1980. The justices rejected the claim that Robbins should have been allowed to address the jury without being subject to questions by prosecutors.

State Deputy Public Defender Michael Pescetta cited the procedural mistake as “a rather shocking commentary” on the way the court is rushing to decide capital cases.

Pescetta also criticized the justices for approving Guzman’s death plea to the jurors. “It seems to me it raises very serious problems with the reliability of a death judgment to allow a defendant, who already is not thinking too clearly, to get on the stand and say, ‘I want to die,’ ” he said.

State Deputy Atty. Gen. J. Robert Jibson said the court made the right decision in approving Guzman’s plea. “For a guy who spent so long in custody, it might well be a rational choice to select death over going back to prison,” Jibson said.

Quarreled With Girlfriend

According to testimony in the case, Guzman, a parolee unable to find a job, quarreled with a girlfriend who told him she was tired of supporting him. Guzman then armed himself with a butcher knife, drove to the Treehouse Boutique and robbed and kidnaped Rodgers, who was alone at the time.

Prosecutors charged that he drove the victim to an isolated area, raped her, beat her with a baseball bat and then stabbed the woman repeatedly.

Guzman’s girlfriend, later testifying with immunity from prosecution, said he admitted the killing to her, saying he “had to do it” because the victim could have been a witness to the robbery.