CA Supreme Court slows pace on capital appeals

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There are no death penalty cases on the California Supreme Court’s late-May calendar, the Horvitz & Levy blog At the Lectern notes, and points out that the last time the Court heard an automatic capital appeal was in February.

The blog finds it interesting because after the Court upheld Proposition 66 in 2017, it stated that the initiative’s deadlines for court action on capital cases “must be deemed directive rather than mandatory,” but also that the deadlines should be considered an instruction to the parties and the court to handle cases as quickly as possible while being “consistent with the fair and principled administration of justice.”

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