Arthur Calderon, Warden v. Russell Coleman (525 U.S. 141)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided December 14, 1998 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 525 U.S. 141 · 119 S. Ct. 500
- Decided
- December 14, 1998
- Term
- October Term 1998
- Vote
- 5–4
- Issue area
- Criminal Procedure
- Disposition
- Reversed and remanded
- Outcome
- Petitioning party won
- Ideological direction
- Conservative
Opinion excerpt
Per Curiam. After a jury trial in a state court in California, respondent Russell Coleman was convicted of the September 5, 1979, rape, sodomy, and murder of Shirley Hill. The jury’s two special circumstances findings of rape and sodomy made Coleman death-penalty eligible under California law. See People v. Coleman, 46 Cal. 3d 749, 756-757, 759 P. 2d 1260, 1264 (1988). At the penalty phase of Coleman’s trial, the trial judge gave the jury a so-called Briggs instruction, then required by California law, which informed the jury of the Governor’s power to commute a sentence of life without possibility of parole to some lesser sentence that might include the possibility of parole. After giving the standard Briggs instruction, the state trial court instructed the jury that it was not to consider the Governor’s commutation power in reaching its verdict. Thus, the full jury instruction on commutation was as follows: “You are instructed that under the State Constitution, a Governor is empowered to grant a reprieve, pardon or commutation of a sentence following conviction of the crime. “Under this power, a Governor may in the future commute or modify a sentence of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole to a lesser sentence that would include the possibility of parole. “So that you will have no misunderstandings relating to a sentence of life without possibility of parole,…
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