for the 2nd time, the 9th Circuit in San Francisco overturned the death penalty for Fernando Belmontes

for the 2nd time, the 9th Circuit in San Francisco overturned the death penalty for Fernando Belmontes, 44. Belmontes was 19 when, on March 15, 1981, killed of Steacy McConnell during a robbery. In mitigation, the defense presented evidence that Belmontes had a family history of poverty and violence.
The 9th Circuit first blocked Belmontes' execution on July 15, 2003 (see), ruling that the trial judge had failed to instruct the jury to consider all mitigating evidence before deciding on execution. On March 28, 2005  the U.S. Supreme Court vacated the decision and directed the court to reconsider its ruling in light of a decision a week earlier. That case concerned William Payton, who raped and stabbed to death a woman in 1980. Payton had argued that his trial judge, in Orange County, failed to instruct the jury to consider his behind-bars conversion to Christianity. In Payton's case, the high court noted that Congress in 1996 changed the law to say that federal judges should defer to state courts' reasonable judgments in death penalty cases. The 9th Circuit, however, ruled 2-1 that Belmontes' case was different because he filed his challenge before the 1996 law was enacted. Consequently, the state court rulings were due less deference, the court said, and it was appropriate to overturn the death penalty because of the judge's failure to issue the mitigation instruction.