The Supreme Court today affirms the death penalty in People v. Johnsen for a 1992 murder and attempted murder in Modesto.
The court’s unanimous opinion by Justice Goodwin Liu rejects a number of different appellate arguments, including that a juror committed prejudicial misconduct by eliciting from her priest — before the trial’s penalty phase — his opinion that voting for the death penalty was not a sin. The court held that any presumption of prejudice from the juror’s conduct was rebutted because, although the “priest said the Church ‘believes in the death penalty,’ so it would not be sinful to vote for the death penalty,” he “did not indicate it was desirable to vote for the death penalty in any given case, nor would a reasonable listener understand the priest’s response to generally favor imposing capital punishment.”
The court also found a jailhouse informant’s testimony was properly admitted — the court concluded the informant was not acting as a government agent when he heard a confession from the defendant (cf. here). And it held that the defendant forfeited a claim the prosecutor committed misconduct in discussing the beyond-a-reasonable-doubt standard of proof and that, even though the prosecutor’s statements were misleading, the comments were harmless in any event.
As it has in recent death penalty opinions (e.g., here), the court summarily dismissed a challenge to the rule that juries are not required to make unanimous findings beyond a reasonable doubt on aggravating factors, despite the court’s signaling in the pending McDaniel appeal that it will reconsider the rule. (See also here, here, and here.)
[Update: Supreme Court again rejects argument that judicial elections taint death penalty judgments.]