People v. Pierson CA4/2

FACTS

In 2002, Pierson and Angelo Will committed a home invasion robbery during

which Will stabbed the victim to death. The jury convicted Pierson of first degree murder

(§ 187, subd. (a)) and found true the special circumstance that the murder was committed

during a robbery (§ 190.2, subd. (a)(17)(A)), and the trial judge sentenced her to life

without the possibility of parole. In 2009, we affirmed Pierson’s conviction in our

unpublished decision, People v. Pierson (May 15, 2009, E039621).

In 2015 and 2016, the California Supreme Court decided Banks and Clark,

respectively, which discuss when section 190.2 authorizes a special circumstance life

without parole sentence for a felony-murder defendant convicted as an aider and abettor.

(Banks, supra, 61 Cal.4th at p. 794; Clark, supra, 63 Cal.4th at pp. 609-610.) Those

decisions held that participation in an armed robbery, on its own, is insufficient to support

a finding that the defendant acted with reckless indifference to human life. Instead, the

fact finder must consider “the defendant’s personal role in the crimes leading to the

victim’s death and weigh the defendant’s individual responsibility for the loss of…