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Evans Raises Venue Concern in Retrials of High-Profile Cases
Concurring With Majority Opinion That Upholds Death Sentence of Man Convicted in Death of Children, Supreme Court Justice Writes Separately to Address Defendant’s Forfeited Change-of-Venue Request
By a MetNews Staff Writer
The California Supreme Court yesterday upheld the death sentence of a man convicted of killing two young children, finding that he forfeited the argument that the trial court prejudicially erred by denying his change of venue request after his highly-publicized first trial was thrown out due to juror misconduct, drawing a concurrence by Justice Kelli Evans addressing the difficulties facing retrials in cases that draw media scrutiny.
In an opinion authored by Justice Joshua P. Groban, joined in by Justices Carol Corrigan, Goodwin H. Liu, Leondra Kruger, Martin J. Jenkins, and Evans, the court also rejected the defendant’s assertions that the convictions were not supported by sufficient evidence, among other claims, and struck a $200 parole revocation fine imposed under Penal Code §1202.45.
Francisco Alvarez was convicted of first-degree murder in the deaths of Tyler Ransom and Dylan Vincent. Ransom was the infant child of Alvarez’s then girlfriend in 1994 when he died from multiple injuries, including a fractured leg and ribcage.
In 1996, Vincent, the four-year-old son of Alvarez’s romantic partner at the time, suffered internal bleeding and blunt force trauma to his abdomen while in Alvarez’ care. After Vincent died of his injuries, Alvarez was charged with two counts of first-degree murder relating to the boys’ deaths.
Alvarez’s first trial began in February 1998, and the jury returned guilty verdicts on all charges and a death verdict. However, the trial court granted a defense motion for a new trial after it was revealed, before sentencing, that a juror’s wife had called into a radio talk show during the trial.
Second Trial
Before the second trial began in April 2000, the defendant brought a motion for a change of venue, submitting over 100 pages of news stories covering the first trial as well as other media coverage, including some articles that described Alvarez as a “two-time child killer” and others wrongly indicating that he had previously received a death sentence.
Kern Superior Court Judge John I. Kelly (now retired) denied the motion but said that it “could be reopened” following the jury selection process. Alvarez did not renew the motion.
Following the second trial, Kelly sentenced him to death on the first-degree murder charges and to 25 years to life imprisonment on lesser charges. Groban concluded that Alvarez “forfeited his claim” that the trial court prejudicially erred in denying the motion for a change of venue by failing to renew the request after the close of voir dire.
Evans concurred in the decision, writing:
“I join the majority opinion in full. I write separately, however, to highlight the substantial potential for prejudice in seating jurors aware of a prior verdict, particularly in high-profile capital cases.”
She highlighted that the case against Alvarez was “shocking, horrific, and highly publicized,” and remarked:
“Although Alvarez forfeited his claim challenging the denial of his change of venue motion, substantial evidence regarding the propriety of trying this case in Kern County existed. Critical components of this evidence, however, arose specifically in the voir dire proceedings which this court cannot consider. These proceedings revealed many members of the jury pool in Kern County were sufficiently familiar with extraordinarily negative media coverage of the case such that they were disqualified. More importantly, several seated jurors were aware that Alvarez had been previously tried for the same crimes.”
Degree of Notoriety
Acknowledging that “[a] significant degree of notoriety is, of course, not unusual in capital cases,” she reasoned that “[t]he relatively unusual feature of this case is that a great deal of the extremely negative press coverage centered around the prior mistrial due to jury misconduct (after jury verdicts in favor of both guilt and death).”
Evans opined that “there existed a significant threat that prospective jurors who were familiar with the media coverage…would not only prejudge Alvarez’s guilt and worthiness of the death penalty but would also harbor the belief that the defendant ‘got off on a technicality,’ ” pointing out that one prospective juror, who was not ultimately seated on the panel, asked “wasn’t he found guilty on the first time, and now he’s back…?”
Noting that the “trial court conducted the majority of the voir dire” in the case and “interposed generic questions inquiring whether the prospective jurors were aware of Alvarez’s case…and would be able to set that information aside and fairly adjudicate the matter,” she asserted:
“In light of the substantial potential for prejudice in seating jurors who may be aware of a prior verdict, particularly in notorious capital cases, trial courts should exercise great care in questioning jurors regarding their ability to maintain impartiality notwithstanding this knowledge. Regardless of any attestations of impartiality by individual jurors, trial courts should also pay significant attention to the percentage of prospective jurors who admit to disqualifying bias. And counsel for both defendants and the prosecution should not hesitate to call to the attention of the trial court evidence uncovered in voir dire demonstrating widespread juror bias.”
The justice continued:
“Why defense counsel here did not do so is unclear from the record. Were more information to come to light tending to show that seated jurors were aware of the prior guilty verdict and/or death sentence, that information would be important in assessing the venue issue. Final determination of any such concerns, however, must await habeas corpus, in which the record does not limit our view.”
In a footnote, Evans added:
“Defense counsel in a situation in which pretrial publicity has potentially tainted the jury may be ‘faced with a Hobson’s choice.’…To ensure a fair jury, they must ‘question each prospective juror individually about what the juror knew about the case from the media or other exposure. By being forced to ask such pointed questions in front of the entire jury venire, however,…counsel risk[s] contaminating those prospective jurors who had not read or heard about the case with the responses of those who had.’…Here, the trial court wisely adopted an individual and sequestered voir dire, which serves to greatly reduce such concerns.”
Other Opinions
Liu also wrote separately, in part, to address “a comment made by the trial court that, although not evidently prejudicial to Alvarez nor raised here by the parties, is prejudicial to the administration of justice.” He wrote:
“In apologizing for a delay during the jury selection process, the trial court remarked to a panel of prospective jurors: ‘I apologize for the confusion that we’ve experienced here this afternoon, but I guess, as I’ve often said, if this was an easy job, they’d have six hundred million Chinamen over here doing it.’ ”
Saying that “[t]he term ‘Chinaman’ is widely recognized as derogatory,” evoking “a history of racist and xenophobic ‘[h]ostility toward Chinese labor’ that ‘prompted the California Legislature to enact a raft of laws designed to disadvantage Chinese immigrants,’ ” Liu declared:
“The trial court may have been unaware of the invidiousness of the term…and the particular usage of the term here….It is therefore worth reiterating the problems with the slur and its connotations, which are well documented in California case law and the annals of California history. Avoiding such demeaning language and rejecting the pernicious stereotype it expresses are essential to sustaining public confidence in our system of justice.”
Chief Justice Patricia Guerrero dissented in part, saying that she concurs in the majority opinion except as to the striking of the parole revocation fine. She wrote:
“Defendant was sentenced to a judgment of death, but also to 25 years to life for assault on a child resulting in death. That latter indeterminate sentence includes a possibility of parole—however unlikely to actually occur—and therefore is subject to a parole revocation restitution fine under section 1202.45.”
The case is People v. Alvarez, 2025 S.O.S. 2334.
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