Ruling Lets Death Penalties Stand Despite Statute of Limitations Issue

The state Supreme Court, easing the way for prosecutors to seek capital punishment, ruled Thursday that a defendant convicted of murder during commission of a felony may be sentenced to death even if he could not be prosecuted for the underlying crime.

The court held 6 to 1 that although the statute of limitations may have expired on a robbery or other felony, such offenses could still serve as a “special circumstance” to warrant the death penalty when there is adequate proof to support the charge.

Otherwise, the law would produce “absurd results” by providing immunity from capital punishment to felony-murder defendants who have been able to avoid prosecution until the time limit expires for the lesser crime, the court said in an opinion by Justice Marcus M. Kaufman.

However, in the case before the court, the justices unanimously reversed the conviction of Oscar Lee Morris, 43, for the murder of William J. Maxwell at a Long Beach bathhouse in September, 1978.

The court said there was insufficient evidence that Morris committed the robbery that served as the basis for the capital charges he faced. While upholding his conviction for murder, the court said Morris must be resentenced to no more than life in prison with the possibility of parole.

In dissent, Justice Allen E. Broussard said the majority had “strained credulity” by ruling the law allows a crime that could not be prosecuted in itself to be used to support capital charges.

“Even though murder has no statute of limitations, a robbery barred by the statute of limitations, which cannot be punished, should not be used to add to the punishment for murder,” Broussard wrote.

State Deputy Atty. Gen. Thomas L. Willhite Jr. said that the court’s reversal of Morris’ sentence was disappointing but that its ruling allowing otherwise outdated charges to be used against capital defendants was “very significant.”

Willhite said that while prosecutors ordinarily are able to bring separate formal charges for underlying felonies in capital cases, there often are instances where the statute of limitations has expired on the lesser crime by the time the case is solved.

“Under the old rule, we weren’t able to seek the death penalty,” he said. “Now, the defendant who had escaped detection in a felony-murder no longer gets a windfall of being protected from capital punishment.”

The ruling removes barriers to seeking the death penalty in several pending cases in California, Willhite said.

The lawyer who represented Morris on appeal was not available for comment.

Morris was in prison for two other killings when he was charged in 1982 with first-degree murder and robbery in the 1978 shooting death of Maxwell in what appeared to be an incident related to homosexual prostitution.

The court rejected Morris’ claim that the capital charges must be barred because the three-year limit for prosecuting a robbery had expired when he was formally accused in 1982.

The law’s requirement that capital charges must be “charged and proved” does not mean that a conviction must be obtained for an underlying felony, Kaufman wrote in a 64-page opinion. Prosecutors must only prove beyond reasonable doubt that such a felony occurred, he said.

But the court went on to find that there was not enough evidence to show that Morris killed his victim during a robbery. The robbery charge was based largely on evidence that Morris had been identified as possessing a credit card that had been lent earlier to Maxwell by another man.

The court concluded that there was “virtually no evidence” that Maxwell’s murder had been committed during the course of a robbery and that Morris could not be sentenced to death.

The justices, however, concluded there was sufficient evidence to support Morris’ conviction for murder.

The court acknowledged the defendant’s claims that prosecutors had improperly failed to disclose that a key prosecution witness, Joe West, who was facing separate charges at the time, had received leniency from authorities after testifying against Morris.

It was West, after being jailed on theft charges in 1982, who contacted authorities and accused Morris of killing Maxwell four years earlier.

The failure to divulge evidence that a jury might find favorable to the accused was a “clear denial of due process” of law and must be “thoroughly condemned,” Kaufman said.

But, as it has often ruled in recent capital cases, the court found that under the circumstances such prosecutorial misconduct was harmless and could not have affected the outcome of the case.

Kaufman noted that West’s own testimony before the jurors was sufficient to enable them to judge his credibility as a witness. Among other things, West admitted that he had been convicted of burglary, robbery, grand theft and rape and acknowledged that he had once made an attempt on Morris’ life.

The court also pointed out that West’s testimony against Morris had been corroborated by other evidence in the case.

Kaufman’s opinion was joined by Chief Justice Malcolm M. Lucas; Justices Stanley Mosk and Edward A. Panelli, and state Court of Appeal Justices Carl W. Anderson and Betty Barry-Deal, sitting temporarily by special assignment.

The court under Lucas has overturned 12 death sentences in the 41 capital cases it has decided since the defeat of Chief Justice Rose Elizabeth Bird and two other court members in the November, 1986, election.