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S.C. Declines to Stay Two Cases for Racial Injustice Claims
Majority Says Delaying Consideration of Appeals Based on Claims Under Racial Justice Act Is Not Automatic; Justices Evans, Liu Dissent in Both Cases, Citing Purported Statutory Support, Legislative Intent
By Kimber Cooley, Associate Editor
The California Supreme Court held yesterday that a statute prohibiting the obtaining of a criminal conviction or sentence on the basis of race—amended in 2022 to retroactively apply to cases on appeal for which the judgment is not final—allows, but does not require, the stay of an appeal and remand for the consideration of the racial injustice claims in the trial court, upon a finding of good cause.
The high court declined to find that the stay-and-remand procedure under the Racial Justice Act (“RJA”), codified at Penal Code §745, is automatic if the defendant raises a claim that is not facially deficient.
The issue arose in an automatic appeal from the judgment of death against Javance Wilson who was found guilty of robbing and murdering two taxicab drivers, Andres Dominguez and Victor Henderson, and attempting to murder a third, James Richards, in early 2000.
Justice Leondra Kruger authored the opinion for the court affirming the judgment of then-San Bernardino Superior Court Judge James A. Edwards (now retired). Chief Justice Patricia Guerrero and Justices Carol Corrigan, Joshua P. Groban, and Martin J. Jenkins joined in the opinion.
No Explicit Command
Kruger wrote:
“The amended provision simply makes clear that a defendant ‘may…move to stay the appeal and request remand to the superior court.’….The reference to requesting a stay and remand is not plausibly read as an implicit command to automatically grant such a request whenever the defendant intends to raise an RJA claim that is not obviously deficient on its face.”
Evans authored a dissenting opinion, in which Justice Goodwin H. Liu joined, saying:
“Ironically—in the first case in which this court addresses the California Racial Justice Act of 2020…— the majority effectively deprives capital litigants of access to the procedure it expressly provides for seeking timely relief….[The majority’s] approach is untethered to the statute’s text or legislative history, and undermines the Legislature’s stated purpose.”
Relying on the decision in Wilson’s case, the court yesterday—in an opinion by Guerrero and joined in by the same justices—declined to stay a separate automatic appeal of the judgment of death of a second defendant, Robert Frazier, to allow him to file a motion under the RJA. Liu and Evans again dissented, citing the same concerns.
Statutory Claims
Sec. 745(a) provides that a defendant may establish a violation by proving that the judge or an attorney, police officer, or juror in the case “exhibited [racial] bias” or that he or she was convicted of a more serious offense than defendants of other races who are similarly situated, or that the defendant received a longer or more severe sentence.
Wilson, who is Black, asserts two potential claims under the RJA, arguing that one of the jurors in the penalty phase of his case referred to evidence of abuse and neglect in Wilson’s background as “cultural” and points to alleged racial disparities in both charging and sentencing. He requested a stay under §745 to develop and present the RJA claims before the trial court.
Kruger points out that §745(b) permits the filing of a “stay-and-remand motion,” but does not specify the standards for deciding whether the request should be granted.
She noted that the stay-and-remand procedure “derives in the first instance from the authority to order a limited remand under Penal Code section 1260” which provides that appellate courts may “remand the cause to the trial court for such further proceedings as may be just under the circumstances.”
Legislative Intent
Looking at the legislative intent, she wrote:
“[W]e infer that when the Legislature referred to motions for a stay and remand in section 745…it intended that RJA litigants would be able to address concerns specific to the RJA by invoking the procedure courts have developed in other contexts to facilitate prompt adjudication of alternate claims of relief where there is good cause to deviate from the usual course of appellate adjudication.”
Wilson asserts that the standard for good cause in this context should be the same as that for determining whether the defendant may obtain discovery under the RJA, which only requires a plausible factual foundation that a violation of the act may have occurred.
Unpersuaded, Kruger reasoned that “a system of virtually automatic stays” would run counter to existing law and that “the legislative history contains no indication that section 745, subdivision (b) was intended to curtail courts’ traditional ability to consider all relevant circumstances in determining whether to grant an appellate stay.”
She concluded:
“The plausibility of Wilson’s RJA claims is certainly a relevant consideration….But it is not the only consideration relevant to the good cause inquiry. As courts have recognized in other contexts, a court must consider whether there are unusual circumstances that give rise to pressing concerns warranting a departure from the usual conduct of an appeal—such as the necessity of preserving a defendant’s rights under newly enacted laws and the importance of alleviating delay in accessing potentially significant benefits…—as well as competing concerns of delay and unnecessary disruption in the resolution of claims properly presented on appeal.”
Habeas Relief
Kruger acknowledged that Wilson raises plausible RJA claims and turned to the other relevant factors. She remarked that “there is no legal obstacle preventing Wilson and other defendants in his position from simultaneously pursuing relief through a direct appeal and relief in the superior court through a petition for writ of habeas corpus.”
Wilson does not dispute that jurisdiction to hear a habeas petition can coexist with an ongoing appeal, but he points to a “insurmountable backlog” of capital cases awaiting the appointment of habeas counsel as interfering with the practicality of using the procedure to obtain relief under the RJA.
The jurist noted that the appointment of counsel for RJA provisions is governed by Penal Code §1473(e) and said that “a defendant need not necessarily await the appointment of counsel available to assist with a full capital habeas petition” and “may file a post-judgment RJA petition with the assistance of counsel appointed pursuant to section 1473(e) for that specific, limited purpose.”
She rejected Wilson’s claim that he would be barred from later raising other habeas claims by the bar on successive petitions, saying that “[w]hen the appointment of capital habeas counsel marks petitioners’ first opportunity to raise comprehensive challenges to their convictions or death sentence on bases other than the RJA, such challenges are not barred as successive.”
Other Considerations
Kruger wrote:
“We recognize that Wilson is willing to tolerate—indeed, perhaps may favor—delaying the final resolution of his appeal while he litigates his RJA claims in superior court. But we must also consider the interests of victims’ families, witnesses, and the public as well….Consideration of these interests counsels against further delaying the resolution of Wilson’s appeal when he has not demonstrated that it is necessary to do so.”
She said that “we do not suggest that a stay and remand is categorically unavailable” but declared:
“Wilson has not demonstrated that he faces legal or practical obstacles to pursuing RJA relief in superior court that would be avoided by staying adjudication and final resolution of the claims he has raised on direct appeal and remanding his case to initiate RJA proceedings. As such, Wilson has not established good cause for us to depart from our usual practice of adjudicating what we can based on the record before us and deferring matters that require substantial factual development for presentation through a petition for a writ of habeas corpus.”
Evans’ Dissent
Evans took issue with the notion that the concurrent habeas jurisdiction provides the necessary avenue for relief, saying that “[t]he majority supplants the Legislature’s demand to swiftly rid the criminal justice system of racism with a novel and unnecessary RJA-specific habeas path that…is riddled with delay because of the difficulty of appointing habeas counsel and processing capital habeas claims.”
She reasoned:
“The question is whether Wilson has established good cause for a stay and remand under the RJA.….Since Wilson sets forth nonfrivolous RJA claims that require further factual development, he has established good cause for a stay and remand under the RJA.”
The case is People v. Wilson, 2024 S.O.S. 2637.
Second Case
The court yesterday also declined to grant a stay-and-remand motion and affirmed the judgment of death against Frazier relating to 2003 murder and rape of Kathleen Loreck.
Loreck was murdered when she went out for a walk on trails near her office in Concord during her lunch break. She was found by police in vegetation near the path and died a few hours later at the hospital.
That case is People v. Frazier, 2024 S.O.S. 2665.
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