Brian Cardile reports in the Daily Journal about yesterday’s Ninth Circuit opinion that held the California Supreme Court in 1996 had “unreasonably applied clearly established federal law” in denying habeas corpus relief to a death row inmate. The inmate’s former and current habeas attorneys both fix the blame for the high court’s “unreasonabl[e]” decision on the court’s dramatic transformation in 1986 when three of its seven justices — Chief Justice Rose Bird and Associate Justices Joseph Grodin and Cruz Reynoso — lost their elections because of their votes in death penalty cases.
One death penalty appellant has advanced an argument explicitly linking death penalty case results and judicial elections. He asserted due process rights are denied by superior court judges and Supreme Court justices whose impartiality is compromised because they know they could be removed from office if they rule in favor of a capital defendant. The Supreme Court rejected the argument (People v. Nguyen (2015) 61 Cal.4th 1015, 1089–1090), but the link cannot be dismissed out of hand. This is especially so when advocates of capital punishment continue to threaten the state judiciary with incendiary comments about “getting rid of” justices who make unpopular death penalty decisions.
The crocodile remains in the bathtub.
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