On the evening of May 28, 1984, a young man came to the door of the sheriff's substation in Templeton, in San Luis Obispo County, California. He told the deputy who answered that he wanted to turn himself in and that he had killed three people. The man was Mauricio Rodriguez Silva. Three weeks earlier he had been paroled from the state prison at Soledad, where he had served a sentence for the voluntary manslaughter of an 18-year-old hitchhiker in 1978.
The three people he had killed were Walter Sanders, a 16-year-old runaway from Lompoc; Monique Hilton, a hitchhiker he had picked up in Los Angeles; and Martha Kitzler, 17, his own half sister. A Los Angeles County jury convicted him of three murders. It took two penalty trials to reach a death verdict, and in 2001 the California Supreme Court set that verdict aside, holding that the prosecutor had removed at least one Hispanic prospective juror for reasons the record did not support. At his penalty trials the defense offered, in mitigation, an unusually long account of his childhood.
Silva's mother was born in Nicaragua and came to the United States around 1950. In Los Angeles she married a man born in Mexico, in 1956. They had two sons. The younger, Mauricio, was born in October 1959 with a cleft palate, a condition that left his speech hard to understand for most of his early life. His parents separated around 1960 or 1961. According to the defense evidence, his mother often left the two boys alone when they were small.
Around 1963 or 1964 the boys were taken to live with their paternal grandmother in Mexico City. Mauricio lived with her again from 1966 to 1968. Witnesses for the defense described a harsh household: they said he was locked in the apartment, kept from food, made to eat apart from the rest of the family, allowed to sleep on the floor and given no schooling, and that he sometimes had bruises. He began to run away. His father, who by then lived in Alaska and sent money for his care, was killed there in July 1968. Later that year a juvenile authority in Mexico committed him as a vagrant.
The grandmother testified for the prosecution at the penalty retrial. She told the jury a very different story: that she had treated him well, hired a tutor for him, given him toys, never left him alone, never kept food from him and never locked the cabinets or the refrigerator. The jury heard both accounts.
Silva returned to Los Angeles in 1970. Over the next several years he shoplifted, stole cars and moved in and out of institutions and homes, among them a juvenile facility in Sylmar, a placement in Corona and the Showers School for Exceptional Children near Oceanside, where he was placed in 1971. His mother died in a car accident in March 1972. He was then placed with a foster family in the Antelope Valley and went to school in Lancaster, where he was put in a class for students the schools then classified as educable mentally retarded.
People who knew him in those years testified at the penalty retrial. A school bus driver remembered him as likable and obedient. A classmate recalled his torn clothes and the teasing he endured. A teacher said he could not write his own name or recognize letters. A school nurse suggested he be examined for acromegaly, a disorder of the growth hormone. A student professional worker at the school arranged surgery on his palate. An evaluation at UCLA in March 1973 found that an earlier repair had not corrected his speech; a second operation followed that September, and the defense evidence showed no further evaluation after it.
Medical testimony gave a reason for his size. Shlomo Meled, an endocrinologist at UCLA, testified that a tumor of the pituitary gland had probably begun when Silva was about a year old and had caused gigantism. His growth hormone levels were high in 1974 and 1976 but normal by 1985, which suggested that the tumor was no longer active. Franklin Rudnick, a psychiatrist, testified that an abnormality of the left temporal lobe is associated with violence and that a pituitary tumor pressing on that area can increase rage. Silva told him that his grandmother had hit him with pots and pans.
As a teenager Silva was committed to the California Youth Authority. In July 1976, in one of its facilities, he set fire to the mattress in his cell; a youth counselor testified that treatment for his burns was delayed. A woman who ran a residential home testified that she saw him placed with her and removed again and again by his parole officer, who cited the cost and refused to arrange therapy.
Harold Safford, a Youth Authority psychologist, evaluated him in 1977. He described Silva as impulsive and unable to learn from experience, and recommended that he be permanently institutionalized or kept in a closed setting. Michael Healy, an educational psychologist who testified for the defense years later, said he had never encountered anyone with as many handicaps, deprivations and rejections. He tied Silva's withdrawal and low self-esteem to the unrepaired cleft palate, the gigantism, the failures of his family, rejection by other children and his placement in special education.
On January 7, 1978, Troy Crovella, 18, a hitchhiker, was shot dead near Palmdale and Lancaster. A 16-year-old boy who had been with them escaped and went to the police. Silva later said he had fired after Crovella shot at him.
On October 26, 1978, Silva pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and was sent to state prison. A prison priest who heard him admit the shooting that year later testified that Silva seemed sincerely remorseful about it.
On September 16, 1979, Silva seriously injured another inmate. On October 23, 1979, Silva pleaded guilty to assault by a prisoner.
He also used his years at Soledad to learn. A priest who met him in 1980 found that he could not read, and Silva taught himself. In late 1981 or early 1982 he began telephoning a Benedictine monastery in the Antelope Valley, and one of its priests, who spoke with him over that period, came to believe that Silva sincerely wanted to do something worthwhile with his life. In 1980 he had also begun a long telephone acquaintance with a woman he had never met, after reaching her number by mistake; they spoke from time to time over the following years.
Silva was paroled from Soledad in early May 1984; the court's account gives May 7 in one passage and May 8 in another. A condition of his parole required an outpatient psychiatric evaluation, for which he was to collect a referral slip on May 15. He did not. Shortly after his release he withdrew about $7,000 from his bank account in Los Angeles, money that apparently came from Social Security benefits paid after his father's death. He thought about working on a ranch in the Palmdale and Newhall area, then dropped the idea when he considered how hard the work would be. He arranged a visit to the monastery he had been calling, arrived hours late, seemed uncomfortable, was shown a room and left without staying the night.
On May 18 he telephoned his parole office to ask whether a warrant had been issued for him, and said he could not live on the outside. A warrant was issued two or three days before his arrest, but, in the words of trial testimony, it "did not get into the system, so it was cancelled."
Walter Sanders was 16 and had run away from his home in Lompoc. Silva met him on a bus soon after his release. By Silva's later account, he pretended to be in the military, admitted he was on parole, and the two agreed to become partners in crime and to commit robberies in New York. They changed their plans and came back to California.
Around May 15 they reached Sylmar, where they visited a friend of Walter's, and Silva bought a small station wagon at a used car lot. Around May 19 they were in Lompoc. Walter telephoned his mother, who came with about $40 and some clothes; he told her he would be home in June, after he finished a job loading trucks. A woman the two visited in Lancaster saw a gun in the station wagon.
Walter Sanders was found dead on May 22, 1984, in the Antelope Valley. He had been shot. Silva told police the two had argued over whether they could trust each other. Ballistics evidence linked the killing to Silva.
Silva told police that after Walter's death he met Monique Hilton in Los Angeles. Her age, her hometown and her family are not on record; the court called her a "relative stranger" to him. She was found dead on May 28, 1984, in the Antelope Valley. She had been shot.
Martha Kitzler was 17, Silva's half sister through their mother. She lived in Hollywood with relatives, among them their uncle. She had recently sold her car and was keeping the money, about $2,700, and she had a boyfriend. Silva stayed at the house on the weekend of May 26 and 27. On the morning of Monday, May 28, their uncle asked him to leave.
Martha Kitzler was killed in Hollywood that day. She died of asphyxia, probably by strangulation. Silva told police that the two had argued. The money from the sale of her car was not taken.
That afternoon Silva called the woman he knew only by telephone. He told her he had killed three people and asked her to pass the information to the police. She urged him to give himself up. He refused at first, saying he was afraid he would be put to death. When she suggested he plead insanity, he told her he was not insane.
Around nine that night he rang at the Templeton substation. After his arrest he was handed over to the Los Angeles police. On May 29 and 30, 1984, he gave tape-recorded statements describing each killing. The court later called parts of his accounts self-serving, and at trial he did not dispute that he had killed all three.
Silva was charged in Los Angeles County Superior Court with three counts of murder. At trial he did not dispute that he had killed Walter Sanders, Monique Hilton and Martha Kitzler, and the defense presented no witnesses and no exhibits at the guilt phase. The jury convicted him of second degree murder for Walter Sanders and first degree murder for Monique Hilton and Martha Kitzler. It found the weapon-use allegations true, found the multiple-murder special circumstance true, and found true the prior-conviction allegations based on the 1978 manslaughter and the 1979 prison assault. Three judges of the Superior Court, Douglas A. McKee, Jean E. Matusinka and Ronald M. George, are listed as having presided over parts of the case.
The first penalty jury could not agree. Its final vote was seven for death and five for life without the possibility of parole, and a mistrial followed. The prosecution tried the penalty phase again before a new jury, presenting the three 1984 murders, the 1978 killing, the 1976 mattress fire and the 1979 prison assault.
The defense answered with the long history of his life: the abandonment and abuse described by family witnesses, the schools that failed to teach him, the untreated palate, the pituitary tumor, the Youth Authority psychologist's warning, and the priests and monks who had seen him try to change. A priest who had known him in prison testified that Silva had expressed remorse in jail for the three 1984 killings.
In rebuttal, besides the grandmother's testimony, the prosecution called Michael Maloney, a clinical psychologist. He testified that Silva had low intelligence but was not technically mentally retarded, was not psychotic and might have a borderline personality disorder. He thought Silva may have been in a rage when he killed Walter Sanders and Martha Kitzler, but was less sure about Monique Hilton. He also described Silva as sincerely remorseful, especially about his half sister.
The second jury returned a verdict of death. The trial court denied the automatic motion to modify the verdict, and the judgment of death was entered on August 11, 1986.
The appeal from the judgment of death was automatic and went directly to the California Supreme Court. The record ran to more than 15,000 pages of reporter's transcript and more than 3,000 pages of clerk's transcript, filed in October 1994. The State Public Defender represented him; the opening brief, filed in June 1996, ran to 543 pages, and later supplemental briefs followed. A related habeas corpus petition was filed on June 4, 1998.
The court decided the case on April 30, 2001, in People v. Silva, 25 Cal.4th 345, in an opinion by Justice Kennard. It rejected his challenges to the guilt verdicts. It found "ample evidence to sustain the verdict of first degree murder on a theory of premeditation and deliberation" for Monique Hilton, and held that the jury could also have relied on a robbery-murder theory. For Martha Kitzler it concluded that the case had gone to the jury on premeditation alone and that Silva had had time to reflect before he killed her. It held that the trial judge had no duty to instruct on theft as a lesser offense, and found that the prosecutor's references to the 1978 manslaughter were not misconduct that required reversal.
The death sentence was another matter. During jury selection for the penalty retrial, the prosecutor used peremptory challenges to remove five Hispanic prospective jurors. No Hispanic juror sat on the jury that voted for death.
The defense objected after the first three strikes, and the trial judge found that the defense had made a prima facie case of discrimination, which required the prosecutor to explain himself. At the prosecutor's request, and over defense objection, the judge heard those reasons in an ex parte hearing, with Silva and his lawyers excluded. The judge accepted the explanations, saying there was "a good excuse" for each. When the defense objected to two more strikes, the judge held a second closed hearing and called the reasons "very valid."
The Supreme Court compared each stated reason with what the prospective jurors had actually said. The prosecutor had said that Jose M. would "look for other options" than death and was "extremely aggressive." In questioning, Jose M. had described himself as "mixed" on the death penalty, said he could return either verdict and, when pressed, said he leaned "possibly slightly" toward death. The court wrote that "the transcript of the death-qualification voir dire provides no support for either of these reasons."
The other reasons fared little better. The prosecutor had said one man leaned away from death and had been in three street fights; the man had described two, said they would not affect his fairness and said that if anything he leaned toward death. He said a woman worked for the county social services department; the record did not show that, though her questionnaire said one of her children did. He cited another woman's job as a police department clerk and said her brother had been beaten by city police officers; the officers involved had been sheriff's deputies, and she said she held no hard feelings. He said a fifth woman's husband or a close cousin had been shot in a robbery and that she seemed sympathetic to the defense; the man shot was a nephew she was not close to, and the court found nothing in the record to support the claim of sympathy.
The court applied the three-step test the United States Supreme Court had set out for such claims and focused on the last step: "whether the record as a whole shows purposeful discrimination." A trial judge's finding deserves deference, the court said, only when the judge has made "a sincere and reasoned attempt to evaluate each stated reason as applied to each challenged juror." Here the trial judge had excluded the defense from the hearings and had not probed the gaps between the reasons and the record. The court decided the claim on Jose M. alone and did not rule on the other four. Removing even one prospective juror for a discriminatory reason, it held, is "an error of constitutional magnitude requiring reversal," and it violated both the federal guarantee of equal protection and the state constitutional right to a jury drawn from a representative cross-section of the community.
The judgment was affirmed in part and reversed in part. The guilt verdicts and the special-circumstance finding stood. The sentence of death did not. The opinion was unanimous; the justices joining it were Acting Chief Justice Mosk and Justices Baxter, Werdegar, Chin and Brown, with Justice Harris of the Fifth District Court of Appeal sitting by assignment.
Proven by jury verdict and affirmed on appeal: the second degree murder of Walter Sanders and the first degree murders of Monique Hilton and Martha Kitzler, with the multiple-murder special circumstance.
Proven by guilty plea: the voluntary manslaughter of Troy Crovella in 1978 and the 1979 assault on a fellow prisoner.
Contested at trial: the conditions of his childhood in Mexico City. Defense witnesses described locks, hunger and neglect; his grandmother denied all of it under oath. The appellate opinion records both accounts without resolving the conflict.
Contested on appeal: the prosecutor's reasons for striking the Hispanic prospective jurors. The Supreme Court ruled only on Jose M. and expressly left the other four strikes undecided.
Varying in the record: the exact date of his parole, given in the court's account as both May 7 and May 8, 1984.
October 1959: Mauricio Rodriguez Silva is born with a cleft palate.
About 1960 or 1961: his parents separate.
About 1963 or 1964: he and his brother are taken to their grandmother's home in Mexico City; he lives there again from 1966 to 1968.
July 1968: his father is killed in Alaska; later that year a juvenile authority in Mexico commits him as a vagrant.
1970: returns to Los Angeles; juvenile placements follow.
1971: placed at a school for exceptional children near Oceanside.
March 1972: his mother dies in a car accident; he is placed with a foster family in the Antelope Valley.
March and September 1973: evaluated at UCLA; second palate operation.
July 1976: sets fire to his mattress in a Youth Authority cell.
1977: a Youth Authority psychologist recommends permanent institutionalization.
January 7, 1978: Troy Crovella, 18, is shot in the desert near Palmdale and Lancaster.
October 26, 1978: Silva pleads guilty to voluntary manslaughter.
September 16, 1979: assaults a fellow inmate; pleads guilty to assault by a prisoner on October 23.
1980: a prison chaplain finds he cannot read; he teaches himself.
Late 1981 or early 1982: begins calling a Benedictine monastery.
May 7 or 8, 1984: paroled from Soledad.
About May 15, 1984: in Sylmar with Walter Sanders; buys a station wagon; misses a parole appointment.
About May 19, 1984: in Lompoc; Walter Sanders sees his mother for the last time.
May 22, 1984: Walter Sanders, 16, is found in the Antelope Valley.
May 28, 1984: Martha Kitzler, 17, is killed in Hollywood; Monique Hilton is found in the Antelope Valley; Silva surrenders at Templeton that night.
May 29 and 30, 1984: tape-recorded statements to police.
At trial: convicted of second degree murder (Sanders) and first degree murder (Hilton and Kitzler), with the multiple-murder special circumstance.
First penalty trial: jury deadlocks, seven to five for death.
Second penalty trial: jury returns death.
August 11, 1986: judgment of death entered.
October 1994: record on appeal filed.
June 4, 1998: related habeas corpus petition filed.
April 30, 2001: the California Supreme Court affirms the convictions and special circumstance and reverses the death sentence.