Clarence Ray Allen - Legal Proceedings

Legal Proceedings

In 1980, the California Attorney General filed charges against Allen and prosecuted the trial in Glenn County, California, due to a change of venue. The trial lasted 23 days, and 58 witnesses were called to testify. Ultimately, the jury convicted Allen of triple murder and conspiracy to murder eight witnesses.

As special circumstances making Allen eligible for the death penalty, the jury also found that Allen had previously been convicted of murder, had committed multiple murder, and had murdered witnesses in retaliation for their prior testimony and to prevent future testimony. During a seven-day penalty phase, the Attorney General introduced evidence of Allen’s career orchestrating violent robberies in the Central Valley, including ten violent crimes and six prior felony convictions. The jury returned a unanimous verdict of death, and the Glenn County Superior Court sentenced Allen on November 22, 1980.

In 1987, the California Supreme Court affirmed Allen’s death sentence. Associate Justice Joseph Grodin’s opinion referred to Allen’s crimes as “sordid events” with an “extraordinarily massive amount” of aggravating evidence. In a dissenting opinion, California Supreme Court Justice Broussard stated that the prosecutor influenced the jury by telling them that "if you conclude that aggravating evidence outweighs the mitigating evidence, you shall return a death sentence," while the law does not mandate a death sentence in such a situation. According to Justice Broussard, this led to a lack of freedom for the jury to make a "normative decision."

In 2005, the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals found that Allen’s trial counsel had been inadequate, and the evidence against him was largely the testimony of Allen’s several accomplices, who painted him as the mastermind who forced them by threats and scare tactics to commit robberies and murders. However the court denied rehearing in Allen’s case. In her opinion for the panel, Judge Kim McLane Wardlaw concluded:

Evidence of Allen's guilt is overwhelming. Given the nature of his crimes, sentencing him to another life term would achieve none of the traditional purposes underlying punishment. Allen continues to pose a threat to society, indeed to those very persons who testified against him in the Fran's Market triple-murder trial here at issue, and has proven that he is beyond rehabilitation. He has shown himself more than capable of arranging murders from behind bars. If the death penalty is to serve any purpose at all, it is to prevent the very sort of murderous conduct for which Allen was convicted.

Deputy California Attorney General Ward Campbell stated in an interview:

Well, Mr. Allen has cited his age, the length of time on death row, claims about innocence, errors at his trial. We found and told the governor we found all those reasons to be unpersuasive given the nature of his crime, which was in fact a direct attack on the criminal justice system perpetrated by a man for whom society thought — for whom society thought was safe. They thought they were safe from him because he was behind bars and yet he continued to perpetrate these types of crimes and none of the factors that they cite now overshadow or outbalance those reasons for now executing the judgment of the people of the State of California.

On January 13, 2006, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger refused to grant Allen clemency, stating that "his conduct did not result from youth or inexperience, but instead resulted from the hardened and calculating decisions of a mature man." Schwarzenegger also cited a poem in which Allen glorified his actions, where Allen wrote, "We rob and steal and for those who squeal are usually found dying or dead."

On January 15, 2006, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals denied Allen's claim that executing an aged or infirm person was cruel and unusual punishment, observing that his mental acuity was unimpaired and that he had been fifty years of age when he arranged the murders from prison. Judge Kim Wardlaw writing for the panel of judges Susan Graber, Richard Clifton, and herself:

His age and experience only sharpened his ability to coldly calculate the execution of the crime. Nothing about his current ailments reduces his culpability and thus they do not lessen the retributive or deterrent purposes of the death penalty.

The United States Supreme Court declined to hear the case, albeit over the dissent of Justice Stephen Breyer, who stated: "I believe that in the circumstances he raises a significant question as to whether his execution would constitute 'cruel and unusual punishment.'"