Tuesday, April 21, 2026
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Death Penalty Upset for Man Who Said God Will Deliver Him
By Kimber Cooley, associate editor
The California Supreme Court yesterday reversed the sentence of death imposed on a man who represented himself during the penalty phase of a trial after telling the judge that God told him that he would be “delivered” from the underlying charges against him relating to the 1985 kidnapping, rape, and murder of a Sacramento woman.
Finding that then-Sacramento Superior Court Judge Lloyd G. Connelly (now retired) did not err in finding the defendant competent to stand trial after his attorneys informed the court of his purported lack of cooperation based on a stated belief that God would save him from consequences relating to the crimes, the unanimous court declared that intervening case law imposing a higher standard for those who seek to represent themselves applies retroactively.
At issue is whether the standard announced by the U.S. Supreme Court in the 2008 Indiana v. Edwards decision, which was adopted by the California high court in 2012 in People v. Johnson, applies to a judge’s decision to permit the defendant to represent himself during the penalty phase of his 2000 trial.
Those cases held that a defendant who is competent enough to stand trial may still be found to lack the mental capacity to handle his own defense and be denied his right to self-representation guaranteed under the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments.
Writing for a unanimous court, Chief Justice Patricia Guerrero opined that the Edwards standard “changed the way trial courts should evaluate” requests for self-representation and, as such, “the general rule of retroactive[]” application to matters not yet final on appeal applies. She added:
“Although the trial court found that [the defendant] was competent to stand trial…, it did not consider whether [he] met the higher standard of competence to represent himself that the high court allowed in Edwards. The distinction between the two is not insubstantial in this case.”
December Disappearance
The question arose after John Bertsch and Jeffery Hronis were arrested for the death of 35-year-old Linda Canady, who disappeared on Dec. 22, 1985. Her body was found days later, having been dumped in a ditch in Imperial County.
During the trial, criminologists testified that the two defendants could not be ruled out as potential contributors of semen collected from Canady’s body, and other experts testified that more than 99% of Caucasian, African American, and Hispanic persons could be excluded as possible sources.
On automatic appeal to the high court, the defendants challenged the admission of testimony of one of the experts at a pretrial hearing to establish that the DNA test results—still a relatively new category of evidence—were reliable. At the hearing, the witness explained that another employee at the lab had informed him of an error relating to one of the instruments, which required him to re-run the examination.
Addressing the assertion that the testimony relayed hearsay in violation of the defendant’s right to confront witnesses, Guerrero noted that “[w]e have not addressed whether the confrontation clause applies at a pretrial evidentiary hearing” and concluded:
“Consistent with the high court’s indications, our prior decisions, and the decisions of our sister states, we hold that the confrontation clause does not apply to [such] pretrial hearings.”
The court rejected the remaining assertions of error, affirmed the convictions of both defendants, and upheld the judgment of death imposed on Bertsch. Justice Victor Viramontes of this district’s Div. Eight, sitting by assignment, joined in opinion.
Competency Standard
Guerrero noted that Penal Code §1367 sets forth the standard for competency to stand trial. The section provides:
“A person shall not be tried or adjudged to punishment…while that person is mentally incompetent. A defendant is mentally incompetent…if, as a result of a mental health disorder or developmental disability, the defendant is unable to understand the nature of the criminal proceedings or to assist counsel in the conduct of a defense in a rational manner.”
Hronis’ attorneys raised a doubt as to their client’s competence as early as January 1995. Connelly suspended criminal proceedings to allow for a formal evaluation and appointed two mental health experts to conduct a clinical investigation of the defendant.
Both experts opined that he was competent, one attributing his statements about God to potential expressions of narcissism and grandiosity, and both agreeing that his “religious views” did not rise to the level of delusion or any other mental illness. Connelly found the defendant competent.
After he was found guilty of first-degree murder with special circumstances in August 2000, he sought to fire his court-appointed lawyers and represent himself, complaining that his attorneys wanted to put on a defense at the penalty phase and that he would rather send the jury home and go ahead and “be with Jesus.”
Noting that the defendant was “soft-spoken, deliberate, and composed,” Connelly granted his request, saying:
“People who are competent…can make what the Court thinks are not rational decisions.
“I don’t think it’s a rational decision for a person to go Pro Per in a penalty phase, but people can make those decisions under the law. Decisions that the trial judge and the counsel may think are improper decisions.”
Different Standards
The chief justice said:
“Hronis contends that even if he was properly found competent to stand trial, the trial court erred when it found him competent to represent himself at the penalty phase. We conclude that, due to intervening changes in law that altered the governing standard for self-representation by certain defendants suffering from mental illness, allowing Hronis to represent himself at the penalty stage constituted prejudicial error.”
Reasoning that “because Edwards and Johnson have been established law for over a decade, a finding of retroactivity to nonfinal cases would not unduly impact the general administration of justice or unfairly undermine the reasonable reliance of parties on the previous law,” she said:
“Having concluded that [the cases apply] retroactively, we must evaluate whether the record demonstrates error. Here, the trial court did not apply the new standard we articulated in Johnson, which is not surprising because neither Edwards nor Johnson had been decided at the time. Thus, the trial court erred.”
Addressing whether the error was prejudicial, she remarked:
“Hronis’s competency to stand trial was extensively litigated below with some evidence suggesting that Hronis’s certainty he would be acquitted possibly impacted his understanding of the nuances of a penalty phase defense. In addition, Hronis plainly had some cognitive deficits. Although the court found that these cognitive deficits did not prevent him from consulting with counsel, it is a different matter entirely whether these deficits would prevent him from taking on the expanded role of acting as his own counsel.”
Noting that the defendant did not offer evidence in his own defense, testify, or give a closing argument during the penalty phase, she opined:
“[H]ad mitigation evidence been presented to the jury, we cannot discount the possibility that the jury would have selected a penalty other than death.”
The case is People v. Bertsch and Hronis, 2026 S.O.S. S093944.
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