July 8
CALIFORNIA:
Appeals court tosses death sentence for Kern County killer
In San Francisco, a federal appeals court on Thursday overturned the death
sentence of a Kern County man convicted of killing a woman 23 years ago.
Ronald Sanders, 52, was convicted of clubbing to death Janice Allen, 52 of
Bakersfield. She was bound and gagged, along with her boyfriend, when
Sanders robbed the apartment for cocaine. The boyfriend survived.
But the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Sanders' jury might have
been improperly induced into sentencing him to death. The court said
jurors were asked, among other things, to vote for execution if they found
the murder "heinous, atrocious and cruel."
The appeals court said that jury instruction was too vague and required
jurors to "guess at its meaning."
The San Francisco-based appeals court, however, upheld the murder
conviction handed up by the same Kern County jury meaning Sanders will
remain in prison for life unless prosecutors convince a new jury that he
should die by lethal injection.
The case is Sanders v. Woodford, 01-99017.
(source: San Diego Union-Tribune)
