U.S. High Court Decides to Hear Killer’s Appeal of ’85 Sentence : Crime: Robert Edward Stansbury was convicted of murdering a 10-year-old girl who approached his ice cream truck. Lengthy legal maneuvering by the Death Row inmate is expected.

The U.S. Supreme Court has decided to hear the Death Row legal appeal of a former ice cream vendor convicted in the kidnaping, rape and murder more than a decade ago of a 10-year-old Baldwin Park girl.

Legal experts say the Nov. 1 decision by the high court to review the case of Robert Edward Stansbury, 52, convicted in 1985 of killing Robyn Leigh Jackson, could result in lengthy legal moves surpassing even the 15 years of legal efforts expended on behalf of convicted murderer Robert Alton Harris, who was executed last year.

“Harris sets the record for the modern era, (since 1976) when the death penalty was reaffirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court,” said state Deputy Atty. Gen. Dane Gillette, the state’s legal coordinator of death penalty cases. “But Stansbury took a very long time at the state level. Whether it will be a benchmark or not, it’s going to be around for a long time.”

Harris spent about three years battling in the California courts to stay alive. Stansbury has spent eight years of legal maneuvering within the state court system, Gillette said.

In March, the California Supreme Court, the state’s highest legal body, reaffirmed Stansbury’s conviction, opening the way for him to begin what could be a decade or more of legal appeals at the federal level, the attorney said.

Gillette said his office is concerned that the expected years of legal maneuvers will bring added torment to the family members of Robyn Jackson.

“The family keeps reliving the murder,” he said.

Robyn’s mother, Sharon Sanchez, could not be reached for comment.

On Sept. 28, 1982, Robyn was lured by the promise of free ice cream and candy to Stansbury’s ice cream truck, which the previously convicted sex offender operated in Baldwin Park. He first raped and beat the child then stuffed her limp body into his ice cream cooler. The next day, he drove her to Pasadena and dumped her, still alive, in a flood control channel. The blow to her head as her body hit the concrete and exposure to cold killed her, medical examiners testified.

In his current appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, Stansbury argues that he was not advised of his right to remain silent when he was questioned by authorities.

At the time of the murder, the ice cream vendor was called in by police as a possible witness. But after he told of driving a vehicle that fit the description of that driven by the murderer, investigators concluded that he might have been the killer. They then advised him of his right to remain silent, attorneys said, but the earlier statements formed part of the case against him.

One of Stansbury’s two current attorneys, David Winton of San Francisco, contends that the investigators should have advised Stansbury of his rights immediately because Stansbury was not free to leave, was in custody and was not merely being interviewed as a witness.

A hearing before the high court on this issue will be scheduled for February and a ruling is expected by June of next year, Winton said.

Yet, once that issue is resolved, Stansbury can pursue a writ of habeas corpus, a legal move by which he can argue that his constitutional rights were violated. This is the realm of law that consumed so much of the appeals process in the Harris case, Gillette said.

Similarly, Stansbury’s case could take just as long, if not longer than that of Harris, despite legal reforms that have attempted to speed up the appeals process, Gillette said.

But the state prosecutor added that the Stansbury case has two unique situations that might shorten the proceedings. The first is that Stansbury represented himself during his trial in Pomona Superior Court. Typically, Death Row inmates contend in their appeals that they were not properly represented by their trial attorneys. Stansbury may not be able to raise that issue because he was his own attorney, Gillette said.

Secondly, Harris presented new evidence during his appeal about his abused childhood. Although Stansbury had a similarly troubled childhood, he has refused to reveal any of it, said his current attorneys.

“At this time, he still seems quite adamant about not wanting to go into issues like that,” said attorney Joe Hearst. “But it’s up to him to change his mind.”

During the three-month murder trial in Pomona, Stansbury clashed often with attorney David Daugherty, then serving as his court-appointed co-counsel. At times, Stansbury refused to actively defend himself and was forced by the court to do so under threat of revoking his right of self representation.

After the jury found him guilty, Stansbury said he would persuade the same panel to sentence him to death. Instead, he kept quiet about the death penalty issue and about his difficult life as a juvenile. He still received the death sentence.

In his subsequent appeal before the state Supreme Court, Stansbury’s court-appointed attorney argued that the death sentence should be reversed because his client failed to offer the “mitigating evidence” of his childhood.

But the state Supreme Court rejected the argument, saying that the lack of mitigating evidence was “the defendant’s own doing, and he generally cannot be heard to complain of it here.”