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Thread: Clifford Stanley Bolden - California

  1. #1
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    Clifford Stanley Bolden - California




    Facts of the Crime:

    Sentenced to death in San Francisco Superior Court on July 19, 1991 for the September 9, 1986 murder and robbery of 46-year-old Michael Pedersen, whom Bolden had picked up in a Castro Street bar.

  2. #2
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    May 5, 2009

    Sentence Upheld For Sole Death Row Inmate From SF

    The California Supreme Court Monday reaffirmed a death sentence for the only San Francisco man currently on Death Row at San Quentin State Prison.

    Clifford Bolden, 55, was sentenced to death in San Francisco Superior Court in 1991 for the 1986 murder and robbery of 46-year-old Michael Pedersen, whom Bolden had picked up in a Castro Street bar.

    After the California Supreme Court upheld the death penalty in Bolden's initial appeal in 2002, Bolden filed a habeas corpus petition claiming that he was denied a fair trial because of an alleged secret agenda by one of the jurors.

    Bolden alleged that juror Jose Sarria, a well-known drag queen and political activist, was acquainted with or at least knew of the victim.

    Bolden also claimed Sarria was set on imposing a death penalty and refused to deliberate the issue with other jurors.

    In Monday's ruling, the high court unanimously rejected those claims.

    The panel upheld findings in which a specially appointed referee, Superior Court Judge Mary Morgan, concluded that Sarria had not known Pedersen before the murder and had not refused to deliberate.

    Bolden can now continue appeals in the federal court system.

    http://cbs5.com/local/Death.sentence...2.1000961.html

  3. #3
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    On May 28, 2009, Bolden filed a habeas petition in Federal District Court.

    http://dockets.justia.com/docket/cal...v02365/215373/

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    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    Death penalty goes on trial in California

    Convicted murderer Clifford Bolden has been on death row for 20 years — more than one-third of his life — desperately seeking life without parole. Now new state legislation might grant that wish.

    Bolden, a hard-traveled male escort who made The City his home in the 1980s, brutally stabbed a man he accompanied home from a bar. Currently the only death row inmate from San Francisco, he twice appealed his 1991 conviction unsuccessfully to the state Supreme Court and is now appealing at the federal level.

    In fact, the 56-year-old could easily die in prison before the state can execute him.

    Such stories are the rule in California, not the exception. It costs the state $184 million a year to maintain the 714 inmates sentenced to die.

    That’s according to 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Arthur L. Alarcón and professor Paula Mitchell, who explored the cost and effectiveness of the death penalty in a recent law review article that has spurred state legislation seeking to let voters decide whether to ban capital punishment. If voters approved such an initiative, California’s maximum criminal sentence would become life without parole, and the sentences of all current death row inmates would be relegated to that.

    According to the report, only 13 death row inmates have been executed since California voters decided to reinstate capital punishment in 1978. The state has spent $4 billion on the program, at an annual average of $139,000 per inmate.

    Hans Hemann, chief of staff for legislation sponsor State Sen. Loni Hancock, D-Berkeley, said he’s optimistic the bill will pass the Assembly — if not on moral grounds, then for fiscal reasons.

    Much of the expense in Bolden’s case came from questions about whether one of the jurors — well-known drag queen and political activist Jose Sarria — knew the murder victim, 46-year-old Michael Pederson, and therefore pushed harder on other jurors to opt for the death penalty.

    After Bolden’s initial 2002 appeal was rejected by the state Supreme Court, those 2005 questions about Sarria sparked another appeal, which was eventually shot down in 2009. A third appeal at the federal level has been moving through U.S. District Court since May 2009.

    In a phone interview from his Palm Springs home, the 88-year-old Sarria expressed shock at the idea Bolden is legally able to appeal again.

    “Think of the money they’ve spent keeping him alive,” Sarria said. “That’s not justice. The death penalty was my charge because of what was presented. There was no doubt in my mind that he committed the crime and that he should pay for it."

    As for banning the death penalty, Sarria said the system should be reformed, not dumped.

    “You should have one appeal and that’s it. He has had appeal after appeal after appeal,” Sarria said. “It was a waste of my time to sit on that jury."

    Senate Bill 490 recently passed the Assembly Public Safety Committee and Hancock’s office is hoping for a floor vote in September. If the bill passes, it will likely come before voters in November 2012.

    **

    Awaiting death

    A timeline of Clifford Bolden’s failed appeals since his sentence in 1991:

    1986: Clifford Bolden, then 32, is arrested on suspicion of stabbing and killing 46-year-old Michael Pederson.

    1991: After lengthy court proceedings, Bolden is convicted by a jury and sentenced to death.

    2002: The state Supreme Court rejects Bolden’s initial appeal.

    2005: Questions arise over whether one of the 12 jurors in the original trial knew the murder victim.

    2006: A 2nd appeal is filed in state Supreme Court over the juror questions.

    2009: The state Supreme Court again rejects an appeal by Bolden, who then begins the federal appeals process.

    2011: The case remains in federal court.

    (Sources: State Supreme Court, U.S. District Court documents)

  5. #5
    Senior Member CnCP Legend JLR's Avatar
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    Bolden filed another habeas petition before the California Supreme Court on February 22, 2014 and it has been fully briefed since October 24, 2014.

    https://appellatecases.courtinfo.ca....lTUCAgCg%3D%3D

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    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mike's Avatar
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    San Francisco’s Lone Death Row Inmate Clifford Bolden Has Sentence Reduced To Life In Prison

    CBS

    The only man on San Quentin’s death row from San Francisco, Clifford Bolden, had his sentence reduced to life in prison Tuesday in a plea deal with local prosecutors.

    San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin announced his office had agreed to reduce Bolden’s sentence to 47 years-to-life in exchange for the condemned killer forfeiting his appeals in federal and state court.

    Under the unusual agreement, Bolden, who has already served more than 34 years in prison for the 1986 murder of Henry Michael Pedersen, will not be eligible for parole until the age of 79.

    A San Francisco Superior Court judge resentenced Bolden on Tuesday. Bolden was not in court because of the current COVID-19 outbreak at San Quentin.

    “In recent years, an increasing number of Americans — and San Franciscans — have come to recognize that the death penalty is not only undeniably cruel and inconsistent with the values of a humane society, but also fails to deter or prevent crime,” Boudin said in a news release. “My office has not sought and will not seek the death penalty, and I am pleased that we have been able to ensure that no one previously sentenced in San Francisco will remain on death row either.”

    A jury had convicted Bolden of first-degree murder and robbery with the special circumstance in the Pedersen slaying in 1991. The judge sentenced him to 22 years for the robbery, which was stayed until the completion of the death sentence.

    Bolden’s conviction was upheld in state court, but he had pending legal challenges in federal court.

    In its motion seeking the resentencing, the DA’s office argued for the reduced life sentence in lieu of the death penalty for several reasons including that there was no public safety concerns with the reduction. In papers filed with the court, San Francisco prosecutors also explained that during his time in prison Bolden has not suffered a single serious rule violation in over 25 years.

    https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/20...ife-in-prison/
    "There is a point in the history of a society when it becomes so pathologically soft and tender that among other things it sides even with those who harm it, criminals, and does this quite seriously and honestly. Punishing somehow seems unfair to it, and it is certain that imagining ‘punishment’ and ‘being supposed to punish’ hurts it, arouses fear in it." Friedrich Nietzsche

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