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Thread: Frank Kalil Becerra - California

  1. #1
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    Frank Kalil Becerra - California




    Facts of the Crime:

    Convicted and sentenced to death in Los Angeles County on October 31, 1997 for strangling two men in a downtown hotel room the day after Christmas 1994 over a drug deal. He was on a drug-binge high when he murdered Herman Jackson and James Harding, both in their early 40s, apparently to settle a dispute over a cocaine deal. The victims were found in a room at the Pacific Grand Hotel. They were tied together, one behind the other, and had been strangled with electrical cords. Their pants were down around their ankles, an act of humiliation 18th Street gang members often use.

  2. #2
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    This case has been fully briefed on direct appeal since December 23, 2009.

    http://appellatecases.courtinfo.ca.g...doc_no=S065573

  3. #3
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    On April 6, 2016, oral argument will be heard in Becerra's direct appeal before the California Supreme Court.

    http://www.courts.ca.gov/documents/c...rs/SAPR616.PDF

  4. #4
    Administrator Helen's Avatar
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    No death sentence for drug dealer: High court finds accused strangler was denied rights

    By Stephanie Michaud
    myLA.com

    The state’s highest court Monday reversed the conviction of a man sentenced to death for strangling two men in a downtown Los Angeles hotel in 1994 over a missing bag of cocaine.

    The California Supreme Court found that Frank Kalil Becerra had been denied the right to represent himself without sufficient support and rejected a lower court finding that Becerra’s pro per status had been terminated because he was “dilatory” and “stalling.”

    On Dec. 28, 1994, James Harding and Herman Jackson were found bound to each other and strangled with electrical cords in a room at the Pacific Grand Hotel, where police said drugs were routinely bought and sold.

    Becerra, an admitted drug dealer and gang member, according to the court’s opinion, had repeatedly threatened to kill Harding in a dispute over the missing drugs.

    The justices focused not on the facts of the case but on the defendant’s contention that the trial court violated his constitutional rights to due process under the Sixth and 14th amendments.

    “We agree,” wrote Justice Carol A. Corrigan in a unanimous opinion, citing precedent finding that “[The] government’s interest in ensuring the integrity and efficiency of the trial at times outweighs the defendant’s interest in acting as his own lawyer” when a defendant engages in “deliberate dilatory or obstructive behavior” that “threatens to subvert ‘the core concept of a trial,”‘ but that “termination of the right of self- representation is a severe sanction and must not be imposed lightly.”

    In April 1995, before a preliminary hearing to determine whether there was sufficient evidence to proceed to trial, Becerra unsuccessfully tried to replace his public defender, according to court documents. The next month, the court granted a request by Becerra to represent himself.

    In June, the defendant asked for a continuance, saying he hadn’t gotten a complete copy of the prosecution’s murder book and requesting 73 pieces of discovery. The prosecution and the defendant’s investigator went back and forth over the data for at least the next month and at a hearing in August, the prosecutor said virtually everything other than some audio tapes had been turned over, while the defendant claimed other items were still missing.

    The parties set the next hearing date for September 28, when, without warning, the court terminated the defendant’s pro per status, according to the high court’s opinion.

    The lower court judge, not identified in the document, told the defendant, “I gave you pro per privileges a little over four months ago and you continued this case on at least six occasions. The Court finds that everything you’ve done is dilatory; that this case is never going to get off the ground; that the prelim will never occur; and that all you’re doing is stalling. Eventually it’s going to have to happen. I don’t want to hear from you anymore.”

    The defendant said that material he needed was missing from the jail’s law library and that he needed time to understand the law.

    “This is a capital case and you’re dealing with my life,” Becerra told the judge.

    When the judge made clear his ruling would stand, Becerra continued, “I haven’t done nothing to take this privilege away from me. You’re taking my constitutional rights from me and that is a reversible error (on) your part.”

    Then the defendant cursed the judge and threw four or five sharpened pencils at the public defender before being removed from the courtroom. His later requests to represent himself were denied.

    The Supreme Court found that the record did not show support for the argument that the defendant had been stalling or made his requests for discovery in bad faith.

    Corrigan cited the “abruptness” of the lower court’s ruling as one challenging aspect of the decision.

    “Terminating a defendant’s self-representation status should be considered a last resort, not a first impulse,” Corrigan wrote. “If the court thought enough time had been spent sorting out discovery, that the outstanding items were unnecessary for the preliminary hearing, that defendant was stalling for tactical advantage, or that defendant needed to work with his investigator and be ready for the hearing by a date certain, the court should have said so on the record before taking dispositive action.”

    The prosecutor who tried Becerra’s case, Deputy District Attorney Elizabeth Ratinoff, said at the time that “the manner in which these killings occurred … is one of the worst homicides I’ve ever seen.”

    Ratinoff, then a member of the Hard Core Gang division, said Becerra was “definitely one of the worst (criminals) that I have personally seen.”

    At sentencing, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge J. D. Smith said Becerra had been in and out of lockup for years, repeatedly threw urine and fecal matter at his guards and was caught with crudely fashioned prison knives and other weapons several times.

    To the end, Becerra maintained his innocence and told the victims’ families, “I want them to know that I had nothing to do with these deaths. I am sorry for their loss, but I’m not sorry to them because I don’t have nothing to be sorry about.”

    http://mynewsla.com/crime/2016/06/27...denied-rights/
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
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    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

  5. #5
    Senior Member CnCP Legend JLR's Avatar
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    The new DA in LA, George Gascon, has pledged not to seek the death penalty in any case and try to reduce all the death sentences from his county. A 2nd death sentence now appears very unlikely.

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