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| Maya James |
In September, attorneys involved in Keker Van Nest's Felony Murder Resentencing Project managed to have San Bernardino resident Demetrius Howard released from prison after the state Court of Appeal affirmed a 2023 verdict that vacated his murder conviction, determining that his co-defendant acted solo in shooting and killing a woman in a 1992 robbery.
Howard was never accused of killing someone himself, but the state's felony murder law said at the time that if a person was involved in an event such as a robbery where an act leading to death was committed, they were subject to murder charges regardless.
After decades of sentencing individuals involved in such crimes to life sentences whether or not they were actually responsible for the deaths, the state in 2018 changed the standard for murder charges and gave imprisoned individuals a chance to appeal to have their sentences restructured under the new standard.
Keker Van Nest partner Maya James told Law360 Pulse that after nearly 30 years in prison, Howard began the petition process shortly after the changes were made. James said it took about five years before his release was ordered last month.
"This was a very long-standing case," James said. "We faced a lot of obstacles and challenges in large part because the statute was so new when his petition was filed that there were a lot of uncertainties of how that law would operate that had to be resolved before he ever got his day in court."
James said that shortly after they petitioned his case, the prosecutors' office challenged the constitutionality of the statute, claiming that the changes must be approved by a statewide vote and that the law violated the separation of powers. The challenge was ultimately rejected.
Howard's initial petition was denied based on a prior finding by a jury that said he had been a major participant in the felony. On appeal, though, James said they successfully argued that because the jury decision being cited was made in 1994 under the old standard, it could no longer be applied to the current standard.
At a two-day evidentiary hearing in 2023, it was shown that Howard's co-defendant was under the influence of drugs and acting on his own, and eventually it was determined that he couldn't have anticipated the killing, much less participated.
Last month, the state Court of Appeal affirmed the decision, leading to Howard's release.
"This case involved a situation where our client had been involved in an attempted robbery, but his co-defendant was under the influence of PCP and other drugs, acting erratically and unpredictably, shooting the victim to our client's complete surprise," James said. "The co-defendant testified and explained that he didn't even know our client was there. He acted unilaterally, arbitrarily and unpredictably, acting entirely on his own."
The Howard case was one of the many matters handled by Keker Van Nest's resentencing project. James, a former San Francisco public defender, said she proposed the project when she was an associate, shortly after the law was changed.
James said a lot of people in prison became eligible for a reduction to their sentences, so many that it strained the public defenders' office, creating an opportunity for Keker Van Nest's attorneys to assist on a pro bono basis. She said the firm's legacy of being founded by former prosecutors along with its history of prisoner advocacy led to significant enthusiasm and support for the project.
"That puts a lot of strain on courts across the state," James said. "I had previously worked in the San Francisco public defender's office and felt very passionate about that work, representing these folks under the much more equitable new law. The public defenders' office had too many cases to handle at that point, so we started taking cases over time, and now it's a full-fledged project with dozens of folks working on these cases."
Past changes in California murder laws have included a voter proposition in 2000 that, among other things, broadened the range of crimes for which defendants as young as 14 are tried as adults. James said that the felony murder law was originally intended to deter killings by broadening the range of people who could be convicted, but ultimately it just ended up putting more people in prison with sentences that didn't match their actions.
"Criminal justice is like a swinging pendulum where the public tide moves in different ways at different points," James said. "People in California saw that there were terrible tragedies happening and felt that it would be a deterrent to these crimes by casting the net broadly against any participant in a felony. It took some time for people to realize that in fact, it wasn't really working as a deterrent and it was unfairly bringing in a whole lot of people with very little responsibility over tragic events that unfold during a felony."
James told Law360 Pulse that Keker Van Nest has worked on more than half a dozen cases since the project's inception, including an early matter involving a homeless person who was convicted of murder after the owner of a warehouse he was sleeping in suffered a heart attack later in the day, an event that was attributed to her shock from discovering him that morning.
"That case was very challenging because we said he wasn't an actual killer under the new law as defined today, but at the time it was a very novel legal issue," James said. "There was a lot of argument, and the issue regarding what an actual killer is for purposes of this new law went to appeal. We ended up reaching an agreement with the prosecutor's office to resentence our client in the interest of justice, and he was ultimately released in 2022."
Other cases include a 2023 resentencing for a San Francisco man named Roderick Thomas who was convicted of first degree murder for his involvement in a burglary where one of the other participants killed a resident and a 2021 case that saw a finding of actual innocence for a San Francisco man named Zachary Vanderhorst who spent 45 years in prison on a wrongful murder conviction.
While California has been reforming a number of criminal laws, James said that the overall portfolio of sentencing laws is still a "convoluted patchwork," and that some of the difficulty in the work she's done stems from the lack of clarity in sentencing laws and how different laws interact with each other.
"The lack of clarity leads to problems with how certain laws are carried out and applied by judges," James said. "I'd always be in favor of additional clarity in these laws to make mistakes less likely."
Correction: A previous version of this story misstated certain details of the cases mentioned. The errors have been corrected.
--Editing by Brian Baresch.
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