Sharon Bernstein – Merced Sun-Star (Merced, Calif.)
Raymond Lee Oyler, sentenced to death for starting a 2006 Southern California blaze that killed five firefighters, didn’t shoot or stab his victims, or kill them personally with his bare hands. So should he be put to death?
Oral arguments in his nearly 20-year-old case were heard Wednesday by the Supreme Court of California, meeting for the first time in five years in Sacramento’s historic appellate courtroom at the Stanley Mosk Library and Courthouse on the Capitol Mall downtown.
The case has particular resonance in the wake of massive wildfires that ravaged the Los Angeles area last month, killing at least 29 people and destroying more than 16,000 structures.
It also is significant following changes in California’s laws governing murder, and the state’s evolving policy on the death penalty, which costs $72 million per year to adjudicate and which prosecutors continue to seek despite a moratorium on executions.
Oyler’s case was one of four heard Wednesday by the court on a variety of topics. One, like Oyler’s, involved California’s murder statutes, while two more were civil cases, including a fight over who had the right to a recipe used for barbecue sauce made for the Trader Joe’s grocery store chain.
Discussing Oyler’s case, the seven justices pressed attorneys for both sides for their interpretation of new laws that changed the definition of the most serious murder charges, so that, for example, a getaway car driver was not put to death for a burglary gone wrong when he or she didn’t know a murder had been committed.
Oyler was the only person charged with setting the 2006 Esperanza Fire, which started near Cabazon and burned more than 40,000 acres. Five firefighters were killed as Santa Ana winds blew the blaze uncontrollably over their location as they tried to save a house.
Oyler’s court-appointed lawyer, Michael Clough, argued that Oyler didn’t meet the definition of the “actual killer” as defined in state law. He disputed Oyler’s 2009 conviction for setting the fire, saying his client had always denied doing it, and alleging that prosecutors presented no hard evidence that Oyler was the arsonist.
Even if he had set the fire, Clough asserted, Oyler would not have done it specifically to kill people.
The Riverside County jury that convicted Oyler of first-degree murder was not instructed to consider whether Oyler met the definition of an “actual killer,” as defined by state law, Clough argued.
But Deputy Attorney General Meredith White said that those definitions were irrelevant, because they were only meant to apply in cases where there was more than one perpetrator present, and one was the actual killer and the other was an accomplice. Moreover, she said, there was no need to prove that he intended to kill people — only that he intended to commit arson.
That argument drew a sharp response from Associate Justice Josh Groban: “Is the attorney general asking us to uphold a death penalty when there was no intent to kill?”
The justices also pressed Clough, seemingly frustrated that he did not provide a clearer explanation of why Oyler should not be considered the “actual killer,” or define a specific gap in the jury instructions or the case for the court to consider.
“If the person who started the Esperanza Fire was not the actual killer, then who was?” asked Chief Justice Patricia Guerrera.
The court will consider the arguments along with briefs filed in the four cases, and is expected to issue its decisions within 90 days.
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