Altshuler Berzon LLP
177 Post Street
Suite 300
San Francisco, CA 94108
(415) 421-7151
(415) 362-8064 Fax
November 6, 2009 – It took almost a quarter century from the date Altshuler Berzon LLP associate (now partner) Michael Rubin and partner (now Ninth Circuit judge) Marsha S. Berzon accepted an appointment from the California Supreme Court to represent a San Quentin Death Row inmate, but in early November 2009, that client, James F. Horton II, received word that he will finally achieve freedom.
Mr. Horton’s case is apparently the first in California history in which an inmate condemned to death has won his freedom as a result of the efforts of single law firm that stuck with him throughout the entire appellate, habeas, and retrial process.
James Horton, an African-American man who was convicted of the October 1982 robbery and killing of a white cocaine dealer, and was sentenced to death after an April 1985 trial in Norwalk Superior Court. Several months later, Altshuler Berzon was appointed to represent Mr. Horton on his direct appeal. The firm’s attorneys continued to represent him through direct appeal, state and federal habeas, two appeals to the Ninth Circuit, and countless proceedings in the state and federal trial courts.
Among the landmark litigation events in the case were:
* The death penalty reversal on direct appeal in People v. Horton, 11 Cal.4th 1068 (1996), the first such reversal by the California Supreme Court following 110 straight affirmances going back to People v. Holloway, 50 Cal.3d 1098 (1990). (The Supreme Court, in an opinion by then-Justice George, held that defendant’s prior juvenile murder conviction in Chicago in 1973 had been unconstitutionally obtained).
* The conditional reversal of defendant’s underlying conviction in Horton v. Mayle, 408 F.3d 570 (9th Cir. 2005), which held that the People’s failure to disclose an immunity deal with its “star witness,” if proven, was a “material” nondisclosure under Brady v. Maryland.
* The outright reversal of defendant’s conviction in Horton v. Mayle, No. CV 97-7298-MRP (SH)(C.D. Cal. 2005). (Because the People disputed whether any deal was offered, Altshuler Berzon (assisted by Bill Genego from Santa Monica) pursued an evidentiary hearing before L.A. Magistrate Judge Stephen J. Hillman, and obtained a full reversal of defendant’s conviction, which Judge Pfaelzer affirmed, without further appeal by the State.)
Because the State then decided to pursue retrial and a corresponding life-without-possibility-of-parole sentence, Altshuler Berzon (assisted by Andy Stein from Bellflower) responded with a series of innovative pretrial motions in Norwalk Superior Court, alleging that the extraordinary State-caused delays in certifying the appellate record and in setting the case for retrial resulted in undue prejudice to defendant’s due process rights. These motions were supported with 144 exhibits, 101 stipulations, and transcripts from four more days of evidentiary hearings. On November 3, 2009, Superior Court Judge John Torribio granted these motions in part, ruling that the People could not call their former “star witness” (described by the Ninth Circuit as “the glue that held the prosecution’s case together,” 408 F.3d at 579-80 & n.4) or refer to any of his prior testimony, while taking the firm’s other pretrial motions under submission. Two days later, the People gave up seeking an LWOP sentence and offered defendant a plea deal that will result in his release from prison in late 2010 – after 27 years of imprisonment, ten of them on San Quentin’s death row.