Sandoval v. Calderon
| Decision Date | 21 February 2001 |
| Docket Number | No. 99-99010,99-99013,99-99010 |
| Citation | 241 F.3d 765 |
| Parties | (9th Cir. 2001) ALFRED ARTHUR SANDOVAL, Petitioner-Appellee, v. ARTHUR CALDERON, Warden of the California State Prison at San Quentin, Respondent-Appellant. ALFRED ARTHUR SANDOVAL, Petitioner-Appellant, v. ARTHUR CALDERON, Warden of the California State Prison at San Quentin, Respondent-Appellee |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Ninth Circuit |
Jeffrey B. Kahan, Deputy Attorney General, Los Angeles, California, for the respondent-appellant/appellee.
Manuel U. Araujo, Beverly Hills, California and Michael S. Magnuson, Whittier, California, for the petitioner-appellee/ appellant.
C. Renee Manes, Assistant Federal Public Defender, Los Angeles, California; John T. Philipsborn, San Francisco, California; and Joseph Schlesinger, Assistant Federal Public Defender, Sacramento, California, for the amici.
Appeals from the United States District Court for the Central District of California Manuel L. Real, District Judge, Presiding D.C. No. CV-94-08206-R D.C. No. CV-94-08206-R
Before: Mary M. Schroeder, Michael Daly Hawkins and Raymond C. Fisher, Circuit Judges.
Opinion by Judge Schroeder; Dissent by Judge Fisher
The Brief of Amici Curiae is ordered filed.
The majority opinion filed November 11, 2000, is amended as follows:
At 231 F.3d 1140, 1145, delete the last paragraph under "APPLICABILITY OF AEDPA" and insert the following paragraph:
At 231 F.3d 1140, 1154 delete the second paragraph under the heading "DENIAL OF LEAVE TO AMEND", and add the following sentence to the end of the first paragraph under that same heading:
At 231 F.3d 1140, 1151, delete the second full paragraph beginning with "The Establishment Clause . . . ."
With these amendments, the panel majority has voted to deny the petition for rehearing and to reject the suggestion for rehearing en banc. Judge Fisher would grant rehearing on the Faretta issue.
The full court has been advised of the suggestion for rehearing en banc and no active judge has requested a vote on whether to rehear the matter en banc. Fed. R. App. P. 35.
The petition for rehearing and the petition for rehearing en banc are denied.
California state prisoner Alfred Arthur Sandoval was convicted of four murders and one attempted murder. He was sentenced to death for one of the murders and to life imprisonment without possibility of parole on the other murder charges. The California Supreme Court affirmed the convictions and, over the dissent of Justice Mosk, the sentences. See People v. Sandoval, 4 Cal. 4th 155 (Cal. 1992). Justice Mosk would have vacated the death sentence and held that the prosecutor's penalty phase summation by its heavy reliance on religious authority in arguing to the jury that the death penalty was sanctioned by God, was not harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. See id. at 205 (Mosk, J., concurring and dissenting).
After the California Supreme Court denied Sandoval's petitions for collateral review, the district court granted habeas relief on the ground that the trial for the single murder count on which the death penalty was imposed should have been severed from the trial on the other crimes. The court reasoned that the victim in the former was more innocent than the other victims. The district court otherwise denied relief, and both Sandoval and the State appeal.
We find no constitutional infirmity in Sandoval's convictions. The trial court was not required to sever any counts in this case. The district court therefore erred in granting the writ on severance grounds. We also reject Sandoval's claim that he was denied his right to represent himself under Faretta v. California, 422 U.S. 806 (1975). The trial court did not err in accepting defense counsel's representation that Sandoval would accept library privileges in lieu of representing himself at trial.
Although we find Sandoval's challenges to his convictions to be without merit, we do hold that Sandoval is entitled to habeas relief from his death sentence. Sandoval was denied a fair penalty phase trial by the prosecutor's closing argument that invoked divine authority and paraphrased a well known Biblical passage as support for imposition of the death penalty.
Sandoval was convicted of two sets of crimes. The first set occurred in Belvedere Park in Los Angeles during a gangrelated fight in the early morning hours of October 14, 1984. At the guilt phase of the trial, three witnesses testified that Sandoval, a member of the Arizona Marivilla gang, shot Gilbert Martinez and Anthony Aceves in the head at close range. He also shot Manuel Torres in the neck, but Torres did not die from the wound. The victims were all members of the Mariana Marivilla gang.
About two weeks later, on October 31, 1984, Ray and Marlene Wells were shot to death in their home. Forensic evidence showed that Ray, like Martinez and Aceves, was shot "execution style" in the head at close range. Marlene was shot from a greater distance. At trial, the Wellses' neighbor testified that he heard shots the night of the murders and saw the silhouette of a medium-sized person with slicked-back hair, leave the house. He also noticed a dark Chevrolet parked near the Wellses' home. He initially thought the car was an Impala, but after consulting one of his car books, determined that the car was a 1968 Caprice.
Benjamin Verduzco, a long-time friend of Sandoval's, testified that Sandoval hid the car he drove the night of the Bel-vedere Park murders in Verduzco's garage. One morning while Sandoval was at Verduzco's house, Ray and Marlene Wells visited the house. Later the same day, the police impounded the car Sandoval had hidden at Verduzco's house. The Wellses were killed a few days later.
The night of the Wells murders, Verduzco received a call from Sandoval during which Sandoval told him that he "just did the big mouth in." When Verduzco questioned who the "big mouth" was, Sandoval asked him if he remembered "the one who was there in the morning with the car" and used the name "R." Sandoval also told him that he "had to do her, too" because she saw him kill "R."
The State also put on evidence that connected Sandoval to the car observed at the Wells murder site. On October 7, 1984, a black 1968 Caprice in good condition matching the description of the car at the murder scene was stolen from the Los Angeles zoo parking lot. Sandoval bought a run-down 1968 Chevy Caprice sometime in October 1984. Police later found the stolen car at the Mexican border at Tecate with a license plate and vehicle identification number with a "pink slip" in the name of the previous owner of the Caprice sold to Sandoval. The driver of the stolen car was a member of the Arizona Marivilla gang.
The jury found Sandoval guilty of four counts of first degree murder and one count of attempted murder. It also found true the special circumstances of multiple murder within the meaning of California Penal Code Section 190.2(a)(3), making Sandoval eligible for the death penalty.
During the penalty phase of the trial, the State presented aggravating evidence about Sandoval's behavior, including witness testimony about specific events demonstrating Sandoval's history of violence. In mitigation, Sandoval presented testimony from friends and family members who described his abused childhood and his commitment to his family, his positive contributions to his community, and his service as a prisoner trustee.
During the prosecutor's summation to the jury, he argued that Sandoval should be put to death for the murders. In urging the jury to return death verdicts, the prosecutor relied heavily on religious authority as commanding capital punishment for Sandoval's crimes.
The jury deliberated for three and a half days before notify-ing the trial judge that it was irretrievably deadlocked. After the judge returned the jury to its deliberations, it reached a verdict after one hour and forty minutes. It concluded that Sandoval should be sentenced to death for the murder of Marlene Wells and to life without possibility of parole for the other murders. The convictions were affirmed on appeal. See People v. Sandoval, 4 Cal. 4th 155 (Cal. 1992). The Supreme Court granted certiorari to consider whether California's "reasonable doubt" jury instruction violated due process. The Court upheld the instruction. See Victor v. Nebraska, 511 U.S. 1 (1994).
Sandoval filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus with the California Supreme Court raising several challenges to his convictions and sentences. The court denied the petition on the merits in an unpublished order. Sandoval then, on July 1, 1996, filed a federal habeas petition which he amended on July 29, 1996. In an effort to exhaust some of the claims in his federal petition, Sandoval also filed a second habeas petition in the California courts.
The district court originally stayed the federal petition pending exhaustion of state remedies. It declined to extend the stay, however, and granted the State's motion to strike Sandoval's unexhausted claims. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court of California denied some of the claims in Sandoval's ...
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