Los Angeles Murder Defense: Setback from U.S. Supreme Court

Los Angeles Criminal Lawyers rely on the jury receiving the correct law in the form of "jury instructions." If the judge makes an error in the instructions he or she provides, criminal defense attorneys frequently request a new trial if the jury returns a conviction. Why? It is of paramount important that the correct law is given to the jury before it reaches a verdict.

However, in a recent ruling, U.S. Supreme Court came to a different opinion. It held that the possibility that a jury, instructed on alternative theories of guilt, may have found the defendant guilty on an erroneous theory because of a flaw in the instructions does not necessarily require reversal of the conviction.Reversing the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in a 6-3 per curiam decision, the high court ordered that the grant of habeas corpus relief to a convicted Northern California murderer be reconsidered.

The case involves the 1993 conviction and life-without-parole sentence of defendant for the robbery and murder of a cashier at a Bay Area Shell gas station. Testimony at trial indicated thatvictim was murdered in the early morning hours of May 24, 1992, by a .45 caliber gunshot to the head. The following day, the gas station cash register was found on the side of a road.

Shortly after the murder,defendant was arrested on an auto theft charge. While in custody, he volunteered information about the crime and led police to some discarded .45 caliber cartridges which appeared to have come from the same gun used in the murder. His unclesaid the defendant admitted the crime.Defendant claimed that it wastheunclewho robbed the station and shot the clerk.

Prosecutors linkeddefendant to the crime based on fingerprints found on the cash register and on a can of Coke found on the gas station counter, and noted that no fingerprints fromthe unclewere found.Defendant testified that he never touched a Coke can on the morning of the murder and that perhaps he handled the can on an earlier visit to the station.

Jurors founddefendant guilty of first degree murder with a robbery special circumstance, but deadlocked as to whether he personally used a firearm or committed great bodily injury. On appeal, he argued, among other things, that as a result of an erroneous jury instruction, jurors may have incorrectly believed that he could be convicted of murder if he joined a robbery after the victim was killed by someone else.

The California Supreme Court agreed that a late joiner may not be convicted of murder, but said that any error in the instructions was harmless because the juryby finding the robbery special circumstancenecessarily determined that Pulidos involvement in the robbery began before the victim was killed. The Ninth Circuit, however, classified the error as structural and held that where a jury is instructed on multiple theories of guilt, one of which is improper, the conviction must be set aside unless it is an absolute certainty that the defendant was convicted on a proper theory.

The high court, however, said there was no structural error, and that the Ninth Circuit should have applied the standard set forth in Brecht v. Abrahamson (1993) 507 U.S. 619. That casewhich involved prosecution comment on post-Miranda silenceheld that error in the conduct of a trial will support the granting of habeas corpus relief only if it had substantial and injurious effect or influence in determining the jurys verdict.

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