The U

The U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco refused to reinstate the death sentence of James Karis for the July 1981 murder of Penny Pennington, saying jurors might have spared Karis' life if they had heard about the violence he saw and suffered as a child. The ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco marks once again that a panel of the court has rejected a California death sentence that was previously upheld by the state Supreme Court. Karis' death sentence was unanimously upheld by the state Supreme Court but was overturned by U.S. District Judge Lawrence Karlton of Sacramento, who called for a penalty retrial of the case.