Release Date:  March 16, 2007
Contact:  Michael Rushford
(916) 446-0345

The United States Supreme Court will hear oral argument Tuesday in a California murder case to consider the defendant’s claim that his 1993 conviction was invalid because the trial judge refused to allow the testimony of a defense witness.  The California-based Criminal Justice Legal Foundation has joined the state Attorney General to argue that the lower court applied the correct standard for judging when an error is harmless.

The case of Fry v. Pliler involves the murder of James and Cynthia Bell in Vacaville, California.  The victims’ bodies were found in their car, parked alongside a highway, at 6:00 a.m. on October 27, 1992.  Medical experts estimated that both victims had been dead for at least four to six hours, and both victims died of gunshot wounds from a .357 magnum pistol.

John Fry, a drug dealer who frequently sold methamphetamine to Cynthia Bell, told friends prior to the murders that Bell owed him money and that he planned to kill her.

At trial several witnesses testified about Fry’s intention to kill Bell.  Several other witnesses testified to seeing Fry after the murders with blood on his clothes, bragging about how much damage his .357 magnum did to the victims.  Other witnesses reported seeing a truck matching the description of Fry’s truck at the murder scene along with the victims’ car around the time they were killed.  Forensic experts reported that bullets recovered from the victims’ bodies and the crime scene were fired from a pistol registered to Fry, which other witnesses identified as a gun Fry was carrying on the day of the murders.

Fry’s defense consisted of testimony from friends who claimed he was with them at the time of the killings and his own testimony that he was just joking when he talked about killing Bell.  He identified several other people as being responsible for the murders.  During the trial, the judge refused to allow the testimony of one defense witness who claimed that her cousin Anthony Hurtz admitted to killing “a man and a woman in a car.”

Following his conviction and life sentence, Fry challenged the judge’s exclusion of the witness on appeal.  The Court of Appeal denied the claim and the California Supreme Court denied further review.  On habeas corpus, a federal district judge ruled that while the exclusion of the witness was error, it was harmless under the standard announced by the United States Supreme Court’s 1993 decision in Brecht v. Abrahamson (won by CJLF).  In a later ruling, the federal Court of Appeals affirmed that holding.  Fry argues that the Brecht standard should not apply to his case and asks for a return to an earlier standard that allowed defendants to attack their convictions for errors that were highly unlikely to have made any difference.

When the United States Supreme Court agreed to hear Fry’s appeal last fall, CJLF filed an amicus curiae (friend of the court) brief in the case.  The Foundation argues that the lower courts applied the correct Supreme Court standard for determining if a trial error prejudiced the defendant’s case or was harmless.

“The Brecht standard correctly balances the need for finality against the need to correct real injustices, and the Supreme Court should keep that rule intact,” said CJLF Legal Director Kent Scheidegger.