9th Circuit panel vacates death row inmate's conviction because of biased jury selection
An appellate court has tossed aside a 29-year-old guilty verdict and death sentence against an African-American inmate due to racial bias.
The Sacramento Bee reported on Monday that a divided three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco has upheld a lower court ruling vacating Steven Edward Crittenden’s 1989 conviction and death sentence for stabbing a couple to death in their own home.
The appellate court sided with U.S. District Judge Kimberly Mueller, who had tossed out the verdict and sentence two years ago after finding that the prosecutor in the original case had been substantially motivated by race when he struck the only African-American from the jury pool. The prosecutor, for his part, has claimed that he struck the prospective juror because of her opposition to the death penalty.
“The Supreme Court has eloquently explained a jury selected without regard to race is a critical constitutional right,” Judge Raymond Fisher wrote (PDF) for the majority.
Judge M. Margaret McKeown dissented from the majority. “In view of the record of what actually happened, the trial judge’s findings and the ultimate composition of the jury, our retrospective parsing simply cannot elevate ambiguous, speculative foundation to proof that the prosecutor was motivated in substantial part by racism,” she wrote.
Crittenden, now 48 years old, had been convicted of murdering 67-year-old William Chiapella and his wife, 66-year-old Kathleen, in their home on the evening of January 13, 1987. The Chiapellas had previously hired Crittenden, a student athlete at California State University, to do some work around the house. According to the Bee, Crittenden was accused of binding, gagging and stabbing both Chiapellas. Crittenden was convicted and sentenced to death in 1989.
According to the Bee, Mueller had ordered that the Butte County District Attorney had to retry Crittenden within 60 days, or release him. Mueller, however, had stayed her order while the state’s appeals were pending. According to the Bee, the state may now appeal for a rehearing en banc or file a petition with the Supreme Court. When asked if his office was ready to retry Crittenden, Butte County District Attorney Mike Ramsay said: “We’ve been preparing for that eventuality.”
