Sentence of Death Reversed 2nd Time : Courts: State justices say blacks were improperly excluded from jury at penalty retrial of defendant. He had been found guilty of slaying a Brinks guard in 1980.

The state Supreme Court on Thursday unanimously reversed a convicted killer’s death sentence for the second time, ruling that blacks were improperly excluded from the jury at his penalty retrial.

The rare second reversal came in the case of Jose Leon Fuentes, found guilty in the murder of Paul Martinez, a Brinks guard, during a robbery at a Torrance shopping center in 1980. The high court had upheld 34 straight death sentences, dating back to May, 1990.

The court, in an opinion by Justice Edward A. Panelli, found that the judge at Fuentes’ penalty retrial failed to adequately evaluate the reasons the prosecutor gave for using 14 of his 19 challenges to exclude black prospective jurors or alternates.

In a separate opinion, Justice Stanley Mosk sharply criticized the prosecutor, Los Angeles County Deputy Dist. Atty. Robert Martin, saying his action was neither a “technical” mistake nor “inadvertent.” Mosk noted that Martin had been warned by the high court in a separate 1986 capital case not to discriminate against black jurors.

Martin responded angrily Thursday, saying he had valid non-racial reasons for challenging the jurors and that he had been wrongly accused of racism. Three blacks ultimately served on the jury, he pointed out.

“I am frustrated and feeling very definitely I have been slandered by innuendo,” Martin said in an interview. “The Supreme Court is saying ‘we are now a fairly conservative court but we’re going to prove to the world we’re going to be the toughest court in the country when it has to do with minorities and civil rights.’ ”

Martin said Fuentes, 49, would face another penalty trial, adding that this time he would accept “the first 12 people” who appeared as prospective jurors.

Fuentes was charged with joining an accomplice in an attempt to rob Martinez as he was leaving the cashier’s office of a department store. In an exchange of gunfire, the guard was killed, Fuentes was wounded and the accomplice escaped and was never apprehended.

In 1985, the high court, then under Chief Justice Rose Elizabeth Bird, upheld Fuentes’ conviction but overturned his death sentence on grounds the jury was not told it must find that he intended to kill the guard.

On Thursday, the justices found that at his penalty retrial, Fuentes’ right to a jury chosen from a fair cross-section of the community was violated when Los Angeles Superior Court Judge William R. Hollingsworth failed to obtain specific reasons for Martin’s challenges to black prospective jurors.

The prosecutor had offered a variety of explanations, saying he had challenged some jurors because they or relatives had been arrested or disliked the death penalty. But Martin made only a “rambling attempt” to explain other challenges, the high court said.