Death verdicts were rendered in two California cases today, one in the north state and one in the south.

Robert Rhoades raped and murdered Julie Connell in 1984. She was 18. Rhoades is already on California's death row for killing 8-year-old Michael Lyons in 1996. "'It's a happy day for us,' Connell's mother, Kathy Connell, said outside court." Henry Lee reports here for the SF Chron.

In Romano v. Oklahoma, 512 U.S. 1 (1994), the defendant argued and four Justices agreed that it violates the Constitution of the United States to tell a capital sentencing jury the defendant is already on death row. Yet in the Rhoades case, defense counsel himself told the jury that. Was counsel incompetent? No, we are informed by reliable sources that he is an excellent lawyer. It illustrates the trivialization of the Constitution in capital cases that an argument could be seriously advanced and nearly succeed that a particular practice is so grossly unfair as to be a constitutional violation, when the same practice is actively employed by good defense lawyers as being favorable to the defendant.

Meanwhile, in the south state, serial killer Chester Turner received a death verdict from a Los Angeles jury, according to this story by John Spano in the LA Times. Over an 11 year span, Turner killed Diane Johnson, 21; Annette Ernest, 26; Anita Fishman, 31; Regina Washington, 27, and her fetus; Andrea Tripplett, 29; Desarae Jones, 29; Natalie Price, 31; Mildred Beasley, 45; Paula Vance, 38; and Brenda Bries, 37. Turner was previously convicted of raping another woman, and DNA linked him to the murders. "'It's been a long time coming, and justice, we know, has been served, but we'll always have a hole in our heart,' said Jerri Johnson-Tripplett after the hearing," quoted in this AP story by Robert Jablon.