Summary
California Supreme Court case in which a convicted murderer seeks to effectively nullify one of the key reforms of California's death penalty implementation initiative, Proposition 66. One of the reasons that California's death penalty was not being enforced prior to 2016 was that convicted murderers were allowed to file an unlimited number of collateral attacks on their judgments in habeas corpus petitions. Although almost all of these claims were rejected as too late, clearly meritless, or both, the time needed to decide those issues introduced great delay. Proposition 66 decreed that only claims by prisoners with a substantial claim of actual innocence (which almost none have) would be considered. Although this requirement is clearly stated both in the text of the initiative and the analysis by the Legislative Analyst, the prisoner in this case asks the Supreme Court to declare that the provision actually means something very different. He asks that the strict test of actual innocence apply only to cases where the petitioner cannot justify his late presentation of his claim, an issue that would take time to decide, reintroducing the delay that Proposition 66 sought to eliminate. Remarkably, instead of opposing this misinterpretation of the law, the California Attorney General has joined the murderer in supporting it. CJLF's brief stands alone in asking the court to uphold the law as written. Equally remarkably, the court accepted this invitation to rewrite the statute rather than give it a fair interpretation.
