SAN FRANCISCO — The state Supreme Court on Thursday reinstated the death sentences of two convicted killers who, in separate cases, broke into the homes of two elderly Southern California women and murdered them for a total of $117.
The justices voted 5 to 2 to uphold the death penalty for Bronte Lamont Wright for the 1981 fatal beating of Patricia Hunter, a 76-year-old Pasadena Sunday school teacher. The court last year had first reversed Wright's sentence, then decided to rehear the case before the decision became final.
In a second ruling, the court unanimously affirmed the death sentence of Stephen Wayne Anderson for the 1980 shooting death of Elizabeth Lyman, 81, in Bloomington, near San Bernardino. Anderson's initial capital sentence had been overturned by the high court in 1985. At the penalty retrial, he was sentenced again to death.
With Thursday's rulings, the high court now has upheld 84 of the 109 death sentences it has reviewed since judicial conservatives gained control following the November, 1986, election defeat of Chief Justice Rose Elizabeth Bird and two other court members. Under Bird, the liberal-led court had reversed 64 of 68 death sentences it reviewed.
Wright, 36, was charged with rape, attempted robbery, burglary and murder after Hunter was found beaten to death in a blood-spattered room in her home. The body was discovered by friends concerned at her failure to attend a Sunday school teachers' meeting earlier in the day.
Wright, whose palm prints were found on a copy of a magazine in the home, confessed to the crime, saying that he entered her home because he believed her to be an "easy mark." He admitted that he took $5 and some change from his victim but said the killing was unintentional.
The defendant was convicted and sentenced to death. In March, 1989, the high court voted 4 to 3 to reverse the sentence. The court said jurors had been improperly allowed to hear testimony from corrections officers that Wright made several threats to kill if he were released from prison and said he liked "to do all sorts of freaky things with the ladies."
But shortly after the decision, Justice Joyce L. Kennard replaced retiring Justice John A. Arguelles, author of the majority opinion. And Justice Marcus M. Kaufman, who had been replaced on the case by an appellate justice while Kaufman was recovering from surgery, returned to active duty on the court. With Kennard and Kaufman participating, the court voted 5 to 2 to reconsider the decision, an unusual action by the justices.
