Supreme Court Upholds Death Sentence in California Case

The Supreme Court's first decision of its young term was a swift but divided opinion upholding the death penalty for a California man who killed a young woman during a burglary more than 25 years ago.

Yesterday's 5 to 4 decision was the second time the fate of Fernando Belmontes reached the Supreme Court, and once again the justices sent it back to the California-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, saying the appeals court had misinterpreted the high court's rulings in overturning Belmontes's death sentence.

The court heard arguments in the case on Oct. 3, its first day hearing cases. The court's initial decisions in a term often are ones easily reached, and while yesterday's vote could not have been closer, it reflected a common split between conservatives and liberals on the court.

After Belmontes was convicted of bludgeoning to death 19-year-old Steacy McConnell with a dumbbell bar, he and his attorneys presented evidence at the sentencing phase about his troubled childhood and also his conversion to Christianity. They offered what is known as "forward-looking" mitigating evidence, arguing that if given a life sentence, he could lead a productive existence in the structured atmosphere of a prison and perhaps even help others.

But his attorneys said the trial judge misled and confused jurors by not specifically instructing them that they could consider such evidence. Instead, the judge, after listing specific mitigating factors, issued a more generic direction to consider any other circumstance that "extenuates the gravity of the crime even though it is not a legal excuse for the crime."

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, writing for the majority, said the judge's directions were adequate.

"It is improbable the jurors believed that the parties were engaging in an exercise in futility when respondent presented (and both counsel later discussed) his mitigating evidence in open court," he wrote.

He noted in the opinion, joined by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr., that it was the third time the court has upheld the specific instructions. Scalia, joined by Thomas, also issued a concurring opinion that said an additional Supreme Court decision, which Kennedy said he did not need to rely on, made this "an easy case."

But Justice John Paul Stevens said the trial judge's decision not to expressly instruct jurors to consider the mitigating evidence resulted in a confusion that "pervaded every aspect of respondent's sentencing hearing."

He wrote: "I simply cannot believe that the jurors took it upon themselves to consider testimony they were all but told they were forbidden from considering." Stevens was joined in the dissent by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, David H. Souter and Stephen G. Breyer.

The case is Ayers v. Belmontes, 05-493.

The court also announced yesterday that it was declining to review two highly publicized cases.

Without comment, justices decided against hearing the appeal of Michael Skakel, the nephew of Ethel Kennedy's who was convicted of beating to death his Greenwich, Conn., neighbor Martha Moxley when the two were teenagers 31 years ago. Skakel is serving a 20-year sentence. His attorneys had argued that the statute of limitations on the crime had passed before he was arrested in January 2000. He was convicted in 2002. The case is Skakel v. Connecticut, 06-52.

The court also declined to review author Lewis Perdue's contention that the blockbuster novel "The Da Vinci Code" is substantially similar to his own book, "Daughter of God." A federal judge had ruled that "Da Vinci" author Dan Brown had not copied the premise of Perdue's book, and an appeals court had upheld the decision. The case is Perdue v. Brown and Random House Inc., 06-213.