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Thread: Bernard Lee Hamilton - California

  1. #1
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    Bernard Lee Hamilton - California




    Facts of the Crime:

    Convicted and sentenced to death for the May 31, 1979 kidnapping and murder of Eleanore Buchanan after she left a night college math class in San Diego County. He dismembered her body, disposed of her headless and handless corpse in California, and drove to Texas and Oklahoma where he was caught driving her stolen van.

    Hamilton was originally sentenced to death in 1981 and was resentenced to death in 1997.

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    February 25, 2009

    Court Upholds San Diego Man's Death Sentence

    The California Supreme Court Monday upheld the death sentence of a San Diego man convicted in the 1979 kidnapping and dismemberment killing of a 24-year-old Mesa College student.

    In 1981, a jury found Bernard Lee Hamilton guilty of murdering Eleanore Buchanan.

    Jurors also found true the special circumstances of murder during a robbery, burglary and kidnapping, and Hamilton was sentenced to death.

    On appeal, the California Supreme Court affirmed the judgment of guilt but set aside the special- circumstance findings because of instructional error.

    In December 1995, after a penalty phase retrial at which Hamilton represented himself, the jury recommended the death penalty for the defendant.

    Today, California's highest court affirmed Hamilton's death sentence.

    According to trial testimony, Hamilton kidnapped and murdered Buchanan after she left a college math class the night of May 30, 1979.

    He dismembered her body, disposed of her headless and handless corpse in Pine Valley, and drove to Oklahoma, where he was caught driving her van.

    http://www.10news.com/news/18777653/detail.html

  3. #3
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    On October 5, 2009, the US Supreme Court denied Hamilton's certiorari petition.

    http://www.supremecourt.gov/Search.a...s/08-10194.htm

  4. #4
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    Hamilton's habeas case before the California Supreme Court appears to have been fully briefed since October 30, 2013.

    http://appellatecases.courtinfo.ca.g...doc_no=S174549

  5. #5
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mike's Avatar
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    Death Row Inmate Died From Natural Causes

    The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation announced the death of a Death Row inmate from natural causes.

    According to a statement, Bernard L. Hamilton, 64, was pronounced dead Saturday morning. According to the statement, Hamilton was sentenced to death in March 1981 by a San Diego jury, for the kidnapping and murder of Eleanore Buchanan.

    According to the CDCR, there are 747 offenders on the state's Death Row. Since 1978, 70 Death Row inmates, including Hamilton, died from natural causes.

    http://www.yourcentralvalley.com/new...natural-causes
    "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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