Court Opinion

ID: 9574512
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 21:05:39.378618+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:44:40.285698
License: Public Domain

TOBRINER, J.
I agree that the judgment of guilt must be affirmed, and that the judgment of death must be reversed.
I concur, however, in the following language of the concur*60ring opinion of Peters, J.: “Inevitably involved in this and all other death penalty eases, is the constitutionality of the procedures adopted in California for the imposition of the death penalty. This issue was argued at length in In re Anderson and Saterfield, 69 Cal.2d 613 [73 Cal.Rptr. 21, 447 P.2d 117]. There this court, by a four-to-three majority, held that the death penalty procedures adopted in California were constitutional. I disagree with that conclusion, and in the instant case would hold the death penalty procedures adopted in California to be unconstitutional, for the many reasons so clearly expressed by Mr. Justice Tobriner in his dissent in the Anderson and Saterfield case. But unless or until at least four members of this court rule to the contrary, or unless or until the United States Supreme Court overrules the majority of this court, I am bound by the majority rule announced in that case. Solely under compulsion of the majority rule adopted in that ease, it must be held, in the instant case, that the death penalty procedures adopted in California are constitutional. ’ ’
Traynor, C. J., concurred.