New justices might shift California death penalty rulings
California Gov. Jerry Brown’s two recent appointments to the state supreme court might tip the institution’s tough-on-crime scales, especially concerning the death penalty, the Los Angeles Times reports.
Those new justices sworn in this month have academic backgrounds, and there is an opportunity to see very quickly whether they might support reconsideration of the court’s recent 4-3 ruling upholding a death penalty case.
The two justices—Mariano-Florentino Cuellar, the only Latino on the high court, and Leondra R. Kruger, its only African-American—could possibly form a new majority with Justice Kathryn Mickle Werdegar, a moderate-to-liberal Republican appointee who dissented in the Jan. 5 death penalty ruling. The decision is not final until after 30 days, during which the court can agree to reconsider the case.
In the past, such turnover on the court has led to quick and sometimes dramatic reversals. In 1996, for example, new justices on the court agreed to rehear an abortion case during the 30-day post-decision period, and one of them joined three dissenters to overturn it and strike down a law requiring minors to get parents’ permission for abortions.
“Brown certainly seems to have reshaped this court in a fairly dramatic way,” says Jan Stiglitz, a co-founder of the California Innocence Project, which has a client’s case before the court. Brown’s appointment of justices who are not former prosecutors, she says, adds “people who don’t have this background that sort of predisposes them to be cynical in criminal cases.”
The court has been dominated by former prosecutors, the Times reports, and it has affirmed approximately 90 percent of the death penalty cases it has reviewed.
The latest appointments to the state supreme court could affect a variety of cases on controversial issues, such as medical malpractice and medical marijuana. But it likely will have the greatest impact in death penalty matters, the Times reports.
Critics question the appointment of justices who have no experience with criminal law. Former prosecutors have “stared evil in the face and know what it looks like,” says Kent Scheidegger, legal director of the Criminal Justice legal Foundation, which supports the death penalty.
Brown’s first appointee to the high court, during his last term, was Goodwin Liu, was a professor at the University of California-Berkeley and also has no experience as a prosecutor.
Cuellar was born in Mexico and traveled daily by foot into Texas to attend school. Later, his family moved to California. He taught administrative law at Stanford Law School and had appointments on national commissions and councils, the Los Angeles Times reported when he was nominated for the state supreme court.
Kruger clerked at the U.S. Supreme Court and the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. She argued a dozen cases before the U.S. Supreme Court while working in the solicitor general’s office, holding the No. 2 position there before being appointed deputy assistant attorney general in the U.S. Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, the Times reported when she was appointed in November.
“I would not be surprised if they decide to reconsider” the death penalty case, says Gerald Uelmen, a professor at Santa Clara University School of Law. “And I base that on precedent. It has happened before.”
