Dailey

Sometimes even the most egregious mistake made at trial can be rectified on appeal. Sometimes it cannot. The mistake here was the failure to provide spaces on the verdict forms to specify the degree of the murders of which a jury found appellants guilty. Although the consequences of this mistake may reduce by decades the sentences imposed for appellants’ brutal crimes, we are powerless to correct it.

Background

Appellants Ray Arthur Dailey and Albert Alexander, along with other accomplices, engaged in a crime spree over a 24-hour period in December 1991 in which they committed 7 armed robberies of commercial establishments. No injuries were inflicted until the final incident, when two employees of a 7-Eleven store in Santa Monica were shot, one fatally. The police were summoned, and while they were engaged in the capture of the perpetrators, an officer mortally wounded one of appellants’ accomplices.

Appellants were jointly charged with two murders (the special circumstance murder of the 7-Eleven employee and the vicarious liability murder of their accomplice), two attempted murders and felonious assaults (of the other 7-Eleven employee and of a police officer who…