Justices Decline to Block Siripongs’ Execution

The state Supreme Court refused Thursday to block the scheduled execution of convicted double murderer Jaturun “Jay” Siripongs, rejecting claims that prosecutors concealed evidence about a possible accomplice.

Siripongs, a onetime Buddhist monk convicted in the 1981 murders of a Garden Grove store owner and her clerk, is scheduled to die by lethal injection early Tuesday morning.

He still has several legal avenues available to him, including an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. Another last-ditch effort to overturn the death penalty--a clemency request before Gov. Gray Davis--is pending.

Prosecutors hailed the 5-1 decision, saying it was consistent with state and federal courts that have ruled on the multitude of appeals filed in the past 15 years.

“The attorneys have brought the same arguments, recycled them and apparently the Supreme Court thought they had no merit. I’m not surprised by this ruling,” Orange County Deputy Dist. Atty. Jim Tanizaki said.

Siripongs’ attorneys were not available for comment, but prosecutors said they expect that additional appeals will be filed.

The defense argued before the state’s high court that prosecutors falsified and concealed evidence so that an alleged accomplice could testify against Siripongs in his 1983 trial. The bloodstained jacket of the alleged accomplice, Netnapa Vecharungsri, was found after the murders.

In her testimony, Vecharungsri admitted it was her coat, but said she had left it at Siripongs’ Hawthorne apartment. Prosecutors have maintained that authorities investigated other suspects, but did not have enough evidence to prosecute anyone other than Siripongs.

Only Justice Stanley Mosk dissented. He wrote that he would be willing to stay the execution to reopen the matter for more arguments.

In another claim raised in the appeal, defense attorneys argued that Siripongs, a Thai citizen, had been denied his rights under the Vienna Convention. Under that international treaty, foreign nationals facing prosecution in other countries are permitted to seek assistance from their consulates.

The court dismissed the claim for being untimely. Prosecutors had argued that the claim was irrelevant because Thailand is not a signatory to the treaty.

Siripongs was originally scheduled to die last November, but just hours before the execution, U.S. District Judge Maxine Chesney issued a stay to consider whether he had been denied a fair clemency hearing from then-Gov. Pete Wilson. The stay was lifted after Chesney ruled that Siripongs’ rights had not been violated.

Later, an Orange County judge rescheduled the execution for this Tuesday.