PRESS RELEASE

In an unusually prompt decision, the United States Supreme Court has reinstated the death sentence of a California murderer.  By a bare 5 to 4 majority in the case of Ayers v. Belmontes, the high court overturned a federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling which had declared Fernando Belmontes’ death sentence improper due to a disputed jury instruction.  At issue was whether a part of the California jury instruction called “factor (k)” properly informed the jury to consider evidence which might weigh against sentencing a defendant to death.  The Ninth Circuit ruling held that it did not.

“The Court of Appeals erred by adopting a narrow and, we conclude, an unrealistic interpretation of factor (k),” wrote Justice Anthony Kennedy in the majority opinion.

“This instruction was considered and upheld by the Supreme Court 16 years ago,” said Kent Scheidegger, who authored the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation’s brief encouraging today’s decision.  “The Ninth Circuit’s opinion was a specious evasion of controlling precedent.”

The facts introduced at Belmontes’ trial are as follows:  on the afternoon of Sunday, March 15, 1981, the parents of 19-year-old Steacy McConnell discovered her lying in a pool of blood at her residence in the small town of Victor in the Central Valley of California.  She died a short time later.  Earlier that day, Steacy had telephoned them to say she was afraid because some people, including an acquaintance, Domingo Vasquez, had threatened her.

That morning Vasquez and two friends, Bobby Bolanos and habitual criminal Fernando Belmontes, who also knew McConnell, decided to burglarize her home.  As they left Vasquez’s residence, Belmontes armed himself with a metal dumbbell bar.  They drove to McConnell’s house in Bolanos’ vintage black Chevy.  After they parked on the street, a short distance from the house, Belmontes told the others that he would go in first, using the bar if forced entry was required, and stack McConnell’s valuables near the back door.  He told them to wait five minutes and then back the Chevy into the driveway and load the valuables.  Belmontes left his wristwatch in the car and approached the house concealing the bar under his shirt.  When he knocked on the door, McConnell answered.  Surprised that she was there, Belmontes told her that he had been hitchhiking and asked if he could come in out of the rain.  After she invited him inside, Belmontes hit her with the bar.

About five minutes later, a neighbor saw Bolanos back his Chevy into the driveway and saw Vasquez exit the car and meet Belmontes at the front door.  The neighbor watched the two carry stereo equipment and other items from the back of the house to the car’s trunk.  Later that day, Belmontes sold McConnell’s stereo for $100, split the proceeds with his two accomplices, and used a portion of the money to buy beer.

At trial, a pathologist testified that Steacy McConnell died as the result of 15 to 20 severe blows to the head, causing multiple skull fractures and hemorrhaging.  He found several defensive wounds on her arms, hands, legs, and feet.  Vasquez and Belmontes each blamed the other for the murder.  Belmontes’ version was that he knocked McConnell unconscious with one blow, but that Vasquez was the one who killed her later when he entered the house.  This was contradicted by the defensive wounds McConnell suffered as she fought for her life, the fact that her blood was on Belmontes’ shoes, and the testimony of several witnesses.

After the jury’s unanimous guilty verdict, a separate sentencing hearing was held to determine if Belmontes should receive the death sentence or life in prison.  The prosecutor introduced Belmontes’ previous criminal record, which included accessory to manslaughter, weapons charges, an assault while he was in juvenile hall, and the beating of his pregnant girlfriend a month before the murder of Steacy McConnell.  The defense presented evidence of Belmontes’ impoverished and abusive childhood and his involvement in a religious program while serving time in the California Youth Authority.  Finally, the judge gave California’s standard jury instructions, directing the jurors to consider all the evidence plus an extra instruction emphasizing that the jury should consider any factor that might weigh against sentencing Belmontes to death.  The jury voted unanimously to recommend a death sentence.

State and federal court review of the conviction and sentence has taken over 25 years.  In his direct appeal, Belmontes challenged the jury instructions, claiming that they did not adequately emphasize consideration of his troubled background and character.  The California Supreme Court rejected this claim.  The claim was also rejected on state habeas corpus.  In 1990, while additional appeals were still pending, the United States Supreme Court upheld California’s standard jury instructions in Boyde v. California.  Two years later, the California Supreme Court declined review of  Belmontes’ state habeas appeal.  Eight and one half years later in 2001, the federal District Court rejected Belmontes’ federal habeas corpus claim attacking his jury instructions.  He appealed that holding to the federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals which, in 2003, ruled that the jury instructions were unconstitutional and overturned his death sentence.  A year later, the Ninth Circuit en banc declined to review the earlier ruling.  The state appealed to the United States Supreme Court which, in 2005, vacated the Ninth Circuit’s decision and sent the case back for reconsideration in light of its recent decision in Brown v. Payton, another decision upholding California’s sentencing jury instructions.  Later that year, the Ninth Circuit ruled that the Brown v. Payton decision did not apply and again overturned Belmontes’ death sentence.

When the Supreme Court agreed to hear the state’s appeal, CJLF joined this case to argue that the Ninth Circuit has seriously misinterpreted Supreme Court precedent in order to overturn Belmontes’ death sentence.  The Foundation asked the Court for a decision to reinstate the sentence and end future challenges to the disputed jury instructions.

“This well-deserved sentence should have been executed many years ago.  Claims such as this one, having nothing to do with actual guilt or innocence, should only be reviewed once, on the first appeal, not litigated over and over for decades,” added Scheidegger.

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