McCoy
People v. McCoy
Opinion
Opinion
Strankman, J.
Appellant Robert Earl McCoy was charged by information with murder, with a prior second degree murder special circumstance, personal knife use and great bodily injury enhancements, and two prior serious felonies. (Pen. Code, §§ 187, 190.2, subd. (a)(2), 12022, subd. (b), 1203.075.) Appellant pled not guilty and not guilty by reason of insanity. Trial was by jury, which convicted him of second degree murder and found the enhancement allegations true. The trial court found the prior murder allegation true. In the sanity phase, the jury found appellant sane when he committed the murder. In the penalty phase, the jury found appellant should be sentenced to life without possibility of parole.
Appellant moved for a new trial on the ground the systematic exclusion of persons aged 70 and older from the jury pool violated his constitutional right to a jury drawn from a representative cross-section of society. In the published portion of this opinion, we conclude the motion was properly denied, because appellant did not show that the group allegedly excluded was a distinctive or cognizable group within the meaning of the representative cross-section rule.