Ashmus v. Superior Court
Annotate this CaseIn 1984, Ashmus was charged with offenses including first-degree murder and rape. On Ashmus’s pretrial motion, the Sacramento County court transferred venue to San Mateo County. After Ashmus was convicted, the San Mateo County Superior Court imposed a death sentence. In 2014, Ashmus filed a second habeas petition in the California Supreme Court to exhaust certain claims raised in his federal habeas petition. In 2019, the California Supreme Court transferred Ashmus’s petition to the sentencing court as called for by Proposition 66, the Death Penalty Reform and Savings Act of 2016, Under Penal Code section 1509, added by Proposition 66, “any petition for writ of habeas corpus filed by a person in custody pursuant to a judgment of death” should be transferred to “the court which imposed the sentence . . . unless good cause is shown. For petitions filed before Proposition 66 went into effect, section 1509(g) provides, “the court may transfer the petition to the court which imposed the sentence.” The Attorney General successfully moved to transfer the petition to Sacramento County Superior Court. The court of appeal concluded the trial court misapplied section 1509. The meaning of “the court which imposed the sentence,” is clear and unambiguous; there is no dispute that the San Mateo County Superior Court imposed Ashmus’s sentence.
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