People v. Bloom
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The Supreme Court affirmed in part and reversed in part the judgment of the trial court convicting Defendant of the first-degree murder of his father and the second-degree murders of his stepmother and stepsister and sentencing him to death, holding that Defendant's second-degree murder convictions must be reversed.
A federal court vacated Defendant's initial conviction and sentence. After a retrial, Defendant was convicted of first- and second-degree murder, and the jury found true a multiple-murder special-circumstance finding and various firearm- and weapon-use findings. Defendant was sentenced to death. At trial, Defendant's counsel conceded his responsibility for the deaths of all three victims, but Defendant was willing to accept responsibility only for the killing of his father and objected to admitting responsibility for the other two deaths. The Supreme Court held (1) defense counsel violated Defendant's Sixth Amendment rights to choose the fundamental objectives of his defense; and (2) while the error did not affect Defendant's first-degree murder conviction or the associated firearm-use finding, the error requires reversal of the remainder of the judgment and the judgment of death.
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