David Edwin Mason was convicted of five murders in Alameda County, California: four older residents of Oakland who died in 1980, and a fellow inmate in the county jail who died in May 1982. A jury found him guilty in 1983, the California Supreme Court upheld the verdicts and the death sentence in 1991, and on August 24, 1993, he was executed at San Quentin. His case is unusual for what came after the sentence. After his state appeals ended, he told a federal court that he wanted no further review, and a series of federal rulings in the summer of 1993 confirmed that the decision was his to make.
Four people died in Oakland in 1980. Joan Picard, 71, died on March 6. Arthur Jennings, 83, died on August 18. Antoinette Brown, 75, died on November 16. Dorothy Lang, 72, also died in 1980, after Brown; the exact date is not on record.
The deaths were separate events, months apart. The jury later found that all four murders were committed during a robbery. How each person died is not on record.
Mason was arrested on February 4, 1981. After his arrest he made a recorded confession to the four Oakland murders and gave police four detailed statements.
On May 9, 1982, Boyd Wayne Johnson, an inmate of the Alameda County jail, was killed. Mason was charged with his murder along with the four Oakland deaths. Johnson's age is not on record.
The case was tried before a jury in Alameda County Superior Court. By May 31, 1983, the jury had convicted Mason, then 26 and living in San Lorenzo, of five counts of first-degree murder. The penalty phase was set to resume on June 14 before Judge Jacqueline Tabor.
The jury found two special circumstances: that the Picard, Jennings, Brown and Lang murders were committed during a robbery, and that Mason had been convicted of more than one first-degree murder in the same proceeding. Mason testified in his own defense. He denied the three confessions he had made to authorities, and he disputed parts of his statements, including an alibi relating to the Jennings date.
The first jury could not agree on a penalty. A second jury heard the penalty phase again and imposed a sentence of death. The date of that sentencing is not on record. He received a death sentence on each of the five counts.
Mason's automatic appeal went to the California Supreme Court, which decided People v. Mason on January 10, 1991. Justice Panelli wrote the opinion for the court. It affirmed the convictions and the sentence, and rehearing was denied on March 13, 1991. The court later rejected three state petitions for habeas corpus.
A federal habeas corpus petition challenging the convictions and sentence was filed on Mason's behalf in April 1992 by his appellate attorney, Charles Marson. On January 7, 1993, Mason wrote to the federal district court. He said he accepted the California Supreme Court's decision, would not seek further federal relief, and did not want Marson to represent him. He asked to substitute another lawyer, Michael Brady, and to have the petition dismissed.
Marson opposed the request, arguing that mental illness affected Mason's decision. The district court held competency hearings on May 13 and 14, 1993. On June 7 it found Mason competent. It found that he had no mental disease, defect or disorder other than possibly an antisocial personality disorder, that any such disorder did not substantially affect his capacity to decide, and that his decision was free, voluntary and made with an understanding of its consequences. On June 14, 1993, the court substituted Brady as counsel and granted the voluntary dismissal.
Three people who sought to act as Mason's next friends tried to intervene and challenge the dismissal. Three of Mason's siblings had joined the effort at first and later withdrew. The district court refused the intervention. On August 20, 1993, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit affirmed the competency finding and the dismissal order. It described the next friends' appeal as tenuous, noting that they had not taken part in the competency hearings and had not obtained a certificate of probable cause. The Superior Court had set the execution for August 24, 1993.
A related order of the Ninth Circuit recalled the mandate and returned the case to the three-judge panel; two judges dissented, arguing that the full court had voted only on the stay of execution. On August 23, 1993, a majority of the court's special death penalty en banc panel voted to affirm the order vacating the district court's stay, and all stays in the Ninth Circuit and the district court were vacated, in Mason v. Vasquez.
Mason was executed in the early hours of Tuesday, August 24, 1993, at San Quentin. He was 36. A request from his former lawyer for a hearing on a final appeal had been rejected the day before by an 11-judge panel of the appeals court. About 250 demonstrators held a candlelight vigil outside the prison the night before.
He was the first death row inmate in California history to forgo the federal appeal process. He had never asked the federal government to spare his life or review his case, and he told a reporter the previous month that he did not want to die but accepted his fate.
All five murders are final convictions. No other death is attributed to Mason and no other charge against him is on record. His reasons for the 1980 murders are not on record, and the date of the sentencing after the penalty retrial is not on record.
March 6, 1980: Joan Picard, 71, of Oakland, dies.
August 18, 1980: Arthur Jennings, 83, of Oakland, dies.
November 16, 1980: Antoinette Brown, 75, of Oakland, dies.
1980: Dorothy Lang, 72, of Oakland, dies; the date is not on record.
February 4, 1981: Mason is arrested.
May 9, 1982: Boyd Wayne Johnson dies in the Alameda County jail.
By May 31, 1983: an Alameda County jury convicts Mason of five counts of first-degree murder; the penalty phase is set to resume June 14.
Later: a first penalty jury does not agree; a second jury imposes death.
January 10, 1991: the California Supreme Court affirms (People v. Mason); rehearing denied March 13, 1991.
April 1992: a federal habeas petition is filed by his appellate counsel.
January 7, 1993: Mason tells the federal court he wants no further relief.
May 13 and 14, 1993: competency hearings; June 7, he is found competent.
June 14, 1993: new counsel substituted and the petition dismissed at Mason's request.
August 20, 1993: a Ninth Circuit panel affirms.
August 23, 1993: the en banc court vacates all stays.
August 24, 1993: Mason is executed at San Quentin.