People v. Homick
Annotate this CaseDefendant and five others carried out the September 1985 murders of Vera and Gerald Woodman in California. In a federal prosecution against Defendant, a jury in 1991 convicted him of murder for hire, for which he was sentenced to life imprisonment. Thereafter, Defendant unsuccessfully requested the Los Angeles County Superior Court to dismiss the murder charges then pending against him in this case, asserting that Cal. Penal Code 656's prohibition against double jeopardy precluded the California prosecution because it was founded upon the same act that was the basis of his earlier conviction in federal court. A majority of the California Supreme Court upheld the trial court's rejection of Defendant's claims and affirmed Defendant's capital murder convictions, holding (1) unlike the preceding murder-for-hire federal prosecution, the California murder charges against Defendant included a lying-in-wait special-circumstance allegation, and thus, the California charges against Defendant required proof of conduct that was not required for conviction of the earlier federal charges; and (2) Defendant's remaining allegations of error did not result in prejudice to Defendant.
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