National Roundup

California
Scott Peterson juror will be offered immunity to testify
REDWOOD CITY, Calif. (AP) — A juror in Scott Peterson’s two-decade-old murder trial will be granted immunity before testifying at a hearing that could determine whether a new trial is granted, authorities said.

The offer to Richelle Nice will come before she testifies at a Feb. 25 evidentiary hearing, Stanislaus County District Attorney Birgit Fladager announced Monday.

Nice was Juror 7 in the trial that ended in 2004 with Peterson’s conviction for killing his pregnant wife, Laci Peterson, and their unborn son.

Prosecutors say Peterson took his wife’s body from their Modesto home on Christmas Eve 2002 and dumped her from his fishing boat into the San Francisco Bay, where her body and that of her unborn son washed ashore separately in April 2003.

Peterson’s lawyers want to overturn his murder conviction on grounds of bias and misconduct. They contend that Nice lied on a jury questionnaire when she denied having been the victim of a crime or involved in a lawsuit.

Attorneys say Nice did not reveal during jury selection that she had been beaten by a boyfriend while pregnant in 2001. She also didn’t disclose that during another pregnancy she had obtained a restraining order - considered a type of lawsuit — against a boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend, whom she feared would hurt her unborn child.

“I don’t think you can make a cogent argument that somebody who is pregnant and has been the victim of violence can go into a trial and at the very least not feel some bias towards a circumstance where a victim is a pregnant woman who basically had violence occur,” Peterson’s lawyer, Pat Harris, said Monday after the hearing.

Peterson’s attorneys have argued that she actively sought to join the jury because she wanted Peterson to be punished for the deaths.

She has denied it.

“I did not lie to get on this trial to fry Scott,” she told the Modesto Bee in 2017.

Nice had said that without immunity — which could protect her from a perjury charge — she would invoke the Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination.

However, if she refuses to answer questions on the witness stand after being given immunity, Nice could be held in contempt of court.

Nice later wrote dozens of prison letters to Peterson while he was on death row. She also co-authored a book on the case with other jurors.

The evidentiary hearing will run about a week, following which the judge will then decide within 90 days whether to grant Peterson a new trial.

Peterson, 49, was sentenced to death in 2005 but he was resentenced to life without parole in December. The California Supreme Court tossed out his original sentence in 2020 on grounds that the jury was improperly screened for bias against the death penalty.

However, the justices also said in their decision that there was considerable circumstantial evidence incriminating Peterson in the first-degree murder of Laci and the second-degree murder of their unborn son.

California
Ex-Air Force sergeant to change plea in officer killing
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A former U.S. Air Force sergeant plans to change his not guilty plea in the fatal shooting of a federal security officer in Northern California during 2020 protests against police brutality, court records filed Monday showed.

Steven Carrillo, 33, pleaded not guilty in July 2020 in the killing of David Patrick Underwood, who was shot on May 29, 2020, while he stood in a guard shack in front of a federal building in Oakland.

Court records showed Carrillo, of Santa Cruz, is scheduled to change his plea Friday at a federal court in San Francisco. His attorney, James Thomson, did not immediately return an email Monday from The Associated Press seeking comment.

On Jan. 31, federal prosecutors agreed to not seek the death penalty.

Prosecutors say Carrillo had ties to the “boogaloo” movement, a concept embraced by a loose network of gun enthusiasts and militia-style extremists. The group started in alt-right culture on the internet with the belief that there is an impending civil war, according to experts.

Authorities accused Carrillo of fatally shooting Underwood from a white van after developing a plot with Robert Alvin Justus Jr., of Millbrae. The pair is accused of driving to Oakland and taking advantage of the distraction afforded by protesters marching through the city’s downtown. Justus drove the van, authorities said.

A week after the shooting in Oakland, Carrillo allegedly ambushed sheriff’s deputies in Santa Cruz County who were responding to a report of a van containing firearms and bomb-making materials. Sgt. Damon Gutzwiller, 38, was killed and several other law enforcement officials were wounded, according to authorities and court records.

Prosecutors in Santa Cruz charged Carrillo with a slew of felonies, including murder and attempted murder in connection to that killing.
Carrillo pleaded not guilty to Gutzwiller’s killing.

New Jersey
Court: ‘3 strikes’ life sentences can count juvenile crimes
TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — A crime committed as a juvenile can be considered for sentencing an adult to life without parole under New Jersey’s “three strikes” law, a split state Supreme Court ruled Monday.

The case involved a man who had committed armed robbery while he was 16 then committed two additional armed robberies when he was 23. Samuel Ryan was sentenced to life without parole after conviction on the third robbery under the 1995 state law that mandates that sentence for repeat offenders convicted of certain types of violent crimes.

Ryan appealed his sentence on the grounds that recent court rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court and New Jersey Supreme Court have held that mandatory sentences of life without parole for juvenile offenders are unconstitutional and constitute cruel and unusual punishment.

In denying his appeal, a 4-2 majority on Monday wrote those rulings don’t support his case and cited several federal appeals courts around the country that have ruled similarly.

In a dissent joined by Justice Fabiana Pierre-Louis, Justice Barry Albin wrote the majority’s decision “is at odds with the evolving standards of decency addressed in our federal and state constitutional caselaw.”

As an example, he noted that last month, the state Supreme Court held that juveniles convicted of murder and sentenced to mandatory minimum terms of 30 years without parole can seek a review of their sentence once they’ve served 20 years.