High Court Reinstates Death Penalty for Killer of 3

SAN FRANCISCO — The California Supreme Court on Thursday reinstated the death sentence of a convicted triple murderer that was overturned in 1985 in a controversial ruling under Chief Justice Rose Elizabeth Bird.

In a 6-1 decision, the court upheld the death penalty for Billy Ray Hamilton, 38, convicted of the shotgun slayings of three people during the robbery of a Fresno market in September, 1980. In another case Thursday, the court unanimously affirmed the death sentence of Robert Cruz McLain, 48, for the rape and murder of a Ventura woman in November, 1979.

Hamilton’s sentence had been reversed in 1985 in a 4-3 ruling on the grounds that the jury had not found that he intended to kill his victims during the robbery.

A year later, the court voted to rehear the case--but a decision was not issued by the time Bird and two other court members left office after defeat in the fall election. The case was left for a ruling by a new court dominated by appointees of Gov. George Deukmejian.

The 1985 ruling had been assailed by critics of the Bird court and was one of a dozen decisions in which death sentences were overturned in felony-murder cases because juries had not found an intent to kill.

But the new court, in a ruling last October, held that it was not necessary to find intent to kill when the defendant was the actual killer--and not merely an accomplice.

Authorities had charged that Hamilton, shortly after being paroled, carried out the crime for money as part of a plot devised by Clarence Ray Allen, an inmate he knew in prison. One of the victims was a store employee who had testified against Allen in a murder case--and Hamilton had a list of witnesses against Allen in his possession when he was arrested.

In separate proceedings, Allen was convicted and sentenced to death in a verdict that was upheld by the high court in 1986.

The court, in Thursday’s majority opinion by Justice Stanley Mosk, agreed with claims by Hamilton’s attorneys that the prosecutor in the case improperly told jurors not to consider evidence of Hamilton’s childhood hardships as grounds for sparing his life.

Under U.S. Supreme Court rulings, evidence of a defendant’s background and character must be considered by jurors, the justices said.

But, as it has frequently concluded in recent capital cases, the state high court said the procedural error could not have affected the outcome in view of the overwhelming evidence against the defendant.

Error Was Harmless

“In these circumstances, we are of the opinion that the error was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt,” Mosk wrote.

In dissent, Justice Allen E. Broussard said that while Hamilton’s conviction should be upheld, the death sentence should be set aside because of the prosecution’s admonition to jurors to disregard the mitigating evidence presented in the defendant’s behalf.

“(A) defendant’s only hope is to introduce evidence which may lead the jury or judge to understand the circumstances that molded his character, to sympathize with his personal struggle, or to find in him some redeeming conduct or quality,” Broussard wrote.

In this case, it was unlikely that the jury ignored the prosecutor and considered such evidence and thus Hamilton was deprived of a fair penalty trial, Broussard said.

With Thursday’s rulings, the court now has upheld the death penalty in 31 of 43 capital cases decided since the departure of Bird.