The unanimous decision marks the first time the state’s high court has reversed a death sentence under the 2020 law, which allows defendants and prisoners to challenge convictions or sentences if racial bias played a role in their case.

Anthony Bankston, a Bloods gang member, represented himself at trial more than three decades ago. A jury convicted him in connection with separate shootings, including the killing of Benson Jones and the attempted murder of Jones’ brother, Benjamin. Bankston was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder and one count of attempted murder.

During the penalty phase, a Los Angeles prosecutor told jurors a story about a journalist who viewed a Bengal tiger in a zoo but was told by a hunter that he had not seen the animal in its true state. The prosecutor described the tiger in the wild with its claws, fangs and growl, using the story to argue that Bankston, dressed in a suit and tie in court, was not the same person he was on the street. The prosecutor called him “a killing machine.”

The Supreme Court concluded that the analogy carried an unacceptable risk of racial bias and could have influenced the jury’s decision to impose a death sentence. Bankston’s murder convictions remain in place, but the case will return to a trial court for resentencing.

Justice Leondra Kruger, writing for the court, said the Bengal tiger story has appeared in multiple criminal cases over the years and should no longer be used in California courtrooms. While the court did not say every animal comparison violates the Racial Justice Act, it found that this particular example falls within concerns the Legislature identified when it passed the law.

The Racial Justice Act specifically addresses language and imagery that can dehumanize defendants or appeal to racial stereotypes, including some animal comparisons. The law was enacted after years of debate over racial disparities in policing, prosecution and sentencing.

The court noted that ordinary expressions involving animals, such as “quiet as a mouse” or “free as a bird,” would not necessarily amount to violations. But the justices said prosecutors may not rely on imagery that risks invoking racial prejudice, particularly in a capital case where jurors are deciding whether a person should live or die.

The ruling was one of four decisions issued this week by the California Supreme Court involving claims brought under the Racial Justice Act.

In two other cases, the court upheld death sentences for Alex Demolle, who was convicted of raping and murdering an 11-year-old girl, and Marcos Esquivel Barrera, who was sentenced to death for murdering two of his children. In a fourth case involving two condemned prisoners of Southeast Asian descent, the court modified earlier rulings, though not on the basis of their Racial Justice Act claims.

A spokesperson for the Judicial Council of California confirmed that Bankston’s case is the first in which the state Supreme Court has reversed a death sentence because of violations of the Racial Justice Act.

Original source: CalMatters

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Alexis Daniel Rosas of Indio, 29, was previously convicted of first-degree murder and attempted murder, along with the two special circumstance allegations and sentence-enhancing gun and great bodily injury allegations for the 2019 slaying of Makayla Jean Massey, also known as Anita Garcia, of Victorville.

John Hall of the Riverside County District Attorney’s Office confirmed the terms of the sentence to City News Service.

Rosas’ girlfriend, 32-year-old Maury Duarte, was convicted in June of first-degree murder and special circumstance allegations of killing a witness to a crime and lying in wait, as well as being an accessory to a felony. She was sentenced in August to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

The jury recommended capital punishment for Rosas following a penalty trial for him alone.

Prosecutors did not seek a death sentence for Duarte. During an August hearing at the Larson Justice Center in Indio, Riverside County Superior Court Judge Jennifer Gerard imposed the sentence required by law for her.

Rosas was previously being without bail at the Byrd Detention Center in Murrieta.

According to a trial brief filed by the District Attorney’s Office, Massey’s boyfriend, identified only as “Abram,” had been at odds with Rosas, a documented member of an Indio street gang, bearing the moniker “Trigger,” for some time. The conflict had resulted in the defendant harassing and attacking the victim on multiple occasions.

On June 24, 2019, the feud led to Rosas going to the abandoned house in the 45-400 block of Oasis Street where Abram and Massey were residing and shooting him in the chest — an act which the victim witnessed and detailed to Indio police immediately afterward, prosecutors said.

Abram was hospitalized but ultimately recovered from the wound.

After the shooting, Massey checked into a Motel 6 in Indio for her own safety, but Rosas learned of her whereabouts and that she had made contact with police, prompting him to plan her murder.

He enlisted Duarte’s assistance, and they used her 2005 Toyota Camry for transport. In the pre-dawn hours of June 25, 2019, Rosas went to the victim’s motel room and persuaded her to come out, then physically restrained her inside the Toyota, which Duarte drove to a vacated ranch in the 82-600 block of Avenue 53 in Thermal, according to court papers.

Once at the location, Rosas shoved the victim out of the car and ordered her to start walking toward a gate.

“The defendant kicked her in the stomach, causing her to fall to the ground,” the brief said. “Rosas then shot Makayla five times. One shot was to her head. He knew he had killed her after the second shot, but he continued to shoot bullets into her body.”

He left the victim where she was slain, and he and Duarte headed back toward Indio, dumping the .380-caliber semiautomatic pistol that he’d used to kill Massey on a roadside.

Massey’s remains were discovered within a couple of days, leading to a sheriff’s investigation that pointed to Rosas as the murderer.

The defendants were arrested without incident on Avenue 42 in Indio on June 30, 2019.

Court papers claimed both Rosas and Duarte had conspired in retail fraud, but neither had documented prior felony convictions in Riverside County.

California currently has a moratorium in place on executions, ordered by Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2019. The last execution in the state occurred in 2006.

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The 16-year-old’s tied-up nude body was found inside a horse trailer parked on a remote ranch in the Ribidoux area. The teen had been shot in the head and there was evidence of rape and torture at the property, investigators said.

Within days of finding the teen, Michael Forrest Thornton, 45, and Janeen Marie Snyder, 21, both of Rialto, were charged with first-degree murder with special circumstances in the brutal slaying.

Separate juries convicted the pair of murder and determined the couple was eligible for the death penalty for kidnapping and torture.

On Tuesday, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation announced Thornton was dead at age 68.

“At 8:35 p.m. [Monday], Thornton was pronounced deceased by a registered nurse in the hospice unit who determined the initial cause of death to be natural,” CDCR announced.

Records show Thornton died at the prison system’s California Medical Facility in Vacaville.

A quiet death — unlike his victim’s.

Thornton and Snyder held Curran captive for 14 days, giving her drugs, intimidating her with firearms and sexually exploiting her, Judge Paul Zellerbach said during sentencing.

Curran’s death marked one in what authorities believed to be a long string of attacks on young girls. Zellerbach said Thornton used Snyder to lure teens to him so he could participate in sexual sadism.

Snyder met Thornton, the owner of a chain of Southern California hair salons, as a runaway when she was 13 or 14 years old and he was in his 30s, Riverside County Deputy District Attorney Mike Rushton said at the time of the trials.

“She eventually became his lover,” he said.

Snyder had been working as a part-time stripper in the Las Vegas area at the time of Curran’s disappearance, according to media reports.

Investigators found Curran was taken from her hometown to California by the killers. Her last moments were especially brutal, according to media reports. She was tied to rafters by her hands and feet and violated.

“It was Miss Snyder who ultimately approached Miss Curran in this very vulnerable position, put the gun to her forehead and pulled the trigger,” Zellerbach said.

Snyder, now 45, is housed at Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla. She is ineligible for parole due to her condemned sentence.

Loved ones tearfully testified Curran was killed before she got her driver’s license, before she ever attended a prom, before she graduated from high school. The Dalmation-loving teen was the would-be maid of honor at her only sister’s wedding. A young life cut short at the hands of two people who outlived her by decades.

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SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California prosecutors said Tuesday that they won’t again seek the death penalty against Scott Peterson in the 2002 slaying of his pregnant wife even if he is granted a new trial based on juror misconduct.

But even that declaration wasn’t enough to entirely take a death sentence off the table, Superior Court Judge Anne-Christine Massullo said.

“Laws change, district attorneys change,” she said. “I want to make sure that we do this right.”

Massullo is considering when to resentence Peterson to life without parole after Stanislaus County District Attorney Birgit Fladager said in a court filing Friday that she would not seek to retry the death penalty portion of the case after it was overturned by the state Supreme Court in August.

“From the legal point of view — I hate using this term — it’s a done deal,” Chief Deputy District Attorney Dave Harris told the judge during what was otherwise an unresolved procedural hearing over who will represent Peterson. “He’s no longer eligible to be housed on death row. He’s not going to be subjected to the death penalty.”

As a legal matter, “it would be a violation for us to ‘up’ that punishment” once Peterson is re-sentenced to life in prison, Harris said. “That can’t be changed once it’s relied upon by the other side.”

But Massullo is also considering if Peterson should get an entire new trial because of juror misconduct.

One of Peterson’s defense attorneys, Pat Harris, said that from his legal research it appears prosecutors could again seek the death penalty if they have to retry the entire case, because a new trial “would send it right back to square one.”

The judge said she expects to decide the new trial issue this year, and she put off a decision whether to resentence Peterson before she makes that decision. She set another hearing for June 18.

Massullo is considering whether Peterson merits a new trial because a juror failed to disclose that she had sought a restraining order against her boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend in 2000.

The juror said in seeking the order that she feared for her unborn child. Massullo must decide if that amounted to juror misconduct, and if so, whether it was so prejudicial that a new trial is warranted.

With Fladager’s announcement Friday, Peterson will be sentenced to life imprisonment if no new trial is granted.

Peterson, 48, appeared at the hearing through a video link from San Quentin State Prison, home of the state’s death row,. But he offered no verbal response to the district attorney’s decision and ensuing legal discussion. California hasn’t executed anyone since 2006, and Gov. Gavin Newsom has imposed a moratorium on executions so long as he is governor.

Laci Peterson, 27, was eight months pregnant with their unborn son, Connor, when she was killed. Investigators said that on Christmas Eve 2002, Peterson took the bodies from their Modesto home and dumped them from his fishing boat into San Francisco Bay, where they surfaced months later.

Peterson was convicted in 2005 in San Mateo County after his trial was moved from Stanislaus County because of worldwide pre-trial publicity.

The state Supreme Court overturned Peterson’s death sentence because potential jurors were improperly dismissed after saying they personally disagreed with the death penalty but would be willing to follow the law and impose it. But the justices said there was considerable circumstantial evidence incriminating him.

Pat Harris said he can now show that there was a nearby burglary on the day Laci Peterson disappeared, supporting the defense’s claim that she was killed when she stumbled upon the crime.

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