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Federal judge throws out death penalty for 1983 double murder
| Friday, Jul 25 2008 5:11 PM
Last Updated: Monday, Jul 28 2008 10:42 AM
A Kern County man sentenced to death 25 years ago for participating in the double murder of a Mojave couple will not face the death penalty after all.
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The state attorney general’s office confirmed Friday it will not appeal a federal judge’s decision to throw out the 1983 death sentence of Constantino Carrera. In addition, the Kern County prosecutor who originally handled the case says too much time has passed to retry the case.
None of these decisions affect Carrera’s conviction for the 1982 robbery and stabbing deaths of Jack and Carol Hayes, who managed the Imperial 400 Motel in Mojave.
Carrera will remain behind bars — but not on death row.
On March 13, U.S. District Court Judge Anthony Ishii issued his final judgment in the case, which affirmed Carrera’s conviction for two counts of first-degree murder.
However, he reversed the trial court’s finding that there were special circumstances connected to the crime — which made the death sentence possible.
In his decision, Ishii found there were instructional errors, prosecutorial misconduct and that informant witnesses lied under oath.
Ward Campbell, supervising deputy attorney general, said an appeal was ruled out because Ishii’s findings “were not likely to be overturned.”
“To my knowledge, there’s no case in which the state has failed to appeal the reversal of a death sentence,” said Stephen B. Bedrick, Carrera’s Oakland-based appellate attorney.
Along with faulty jury instruction, Ishii found that Kern County prosecutor Michael Vendrasco committed misconduct when he presented contradictory versions of the crime in separate trials of Carrera and his 17-year-old co-defendant, Ramiro Ruiz.
Ishii also found that two jailhouse informants were given breaks in exchange for testimony that helped convict Carrera. Although Vendrasco denied the deals with the informants, Ishii found him “unconvincing.”
Vendrasco said he’s outraged that the death penalty appeals process is so lengthy that it’s impossible to retry an adverse decision without DNA.
“It’s ridiculous,” he said. “It’s been 25 years. It’s not going to be retried.”
Instead, he will seek consecutive 25-years-to-life sentences — the same as Ruiz received — when the case comes back for resentencing.
That normally occurs within 90 days of the judge’s final ruling, but because Carrera is seeking permission from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeal to try to overturn the murder convictions, resentencing will likely be delayed.
“Judge Ishii is wrong,” he said in response to the decision.
He said the same issues were presented before the California Supreme Court which upheld the death penalty and murder convictions in 1989.
Bedrick said “if you believe in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy” then it’s believable that Vendrasco didn’t know that informants Julius Jones and Thomas Hill were given time off their sentences in exchange for their testimony.
Bedrick pointed out that Ishii found additional prosecution misconduct for presenting inconsistent stories at the separate trials of the two defendants.
And by choosing not to appeal the federal court’s findings, the attorney general has sent a message that Ishii’s findings are legally valid, Bedrick said.
“Mr. Vendrasco knew what he was doing.”