Jeremiah Smith: “several comments have been made today, I think correctly so. I do not think the information was out. But it is…”

“several comments have been made today, I think correctly so. I do not think the information was out. But it is interesting we now have a capital sentencing case, Arreguin v. Prunty, in which Judge Paez was reversed, as of yesterday. Several people had said no criminal case of his had been reversed. Those statements were correct. That has changed now since March 9. So here we have this judge being reversed, this judge we are now talking about putting on the circuit court. In this case, the defendant was an accomplice to robbery and murder and he actively encouraged the murder of an innocent civilian. Under California law, an accomplice can only be sentenced to life without parole or death if he was a ``major participant'' in the capital crime. In Arreguin, an impartial jury unanimously convicted the defendant as an accomplice to robbery and murder. The State trial judge instructed the jury on what a ``major participant'' was. The jury sentenced the defendant to life without parole. The California appellate courts recognized that the State trial judge made a technical error in giving the ``major participant'' instruction, but held that the record clearly showed that the defendant was in fact a ``major participant'' in the robbery-murder and affirmed the sentence under the harmless error rule.”