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406 U.S. 813

92 S. Ct. 1931

32 L. Ed. 2d 511

Docket No. 68—5027.

Aikens v. California

Supreme Court of the United States

Argued Jan. 17, 1972.

Decided June 7, 1972.

Supreme Court of the United States · decided 1972-06-07

Aikens v. California, 406 U.S. 813 (1972), was a decision of the United States Supreme Court where a petitioner (in the U.S. Supreme Court, the plaintiff (Aikens) is called the petitioner and the defendant (the State of California) is called the respondent) was appealing his conviction and death sentence. After oral argument had been made on the case, but before the court decided on it, the Supreme Court of California in People v. Anderson, declared the death penalty unconstitutional under the state constitution. This made his appeal unnecessary because the decision in Anderson declared capital punishment in California unconstitutional under Art. 1, 6, of the state constitution...

Source: Wikipedia ↗

Relies on 6 Cal. 3d 628 - People v. Anderson · Alphonse v. W. M. Kinner Transport Co.

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Petition denied / appeal dismissed · 9–0 · Opinion by Per Curiam · Decided 1972-06-07

How this case has been cited

Cited by 21 later decisions (10 by the Supreme Court) — most recently September 1999

4 federal appellate · 3 district ·

90197219801990decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

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Anthony G. Amsterdam, Stanford, Cal., for petitioner.

Ronald M. George, Los Angeles, Cal., for respondent.

PER CURIAM.

¶1

Petitioner in this case, which has been orally argued and is now sub judice, has filed a Suggestion of Mootness and Motion for Remand based on the intervening decision of the California Supreme Court in People v. Anderson, 6 Cal.3d 628, 100 Cal.Rptr. 152, 493 P.2d 880 (1972). That decision declared capital punishment in California unconstitutional under Art. 1, § 6, of the state constitution. The decision rested on an adequate state ground and the State's petition for writ of certiorari was denied. 406 U.S. 958, 92 S.Ct. 2060, 32 L.Ed.2d 344. The California Supreme Court declared in the Anderson case that its decision was fully retroactive and stated that any prisoner currently under sentence of death could petition a superior court to modify its judgment. Petitioner thus no longer faces a realistic threat of execution, and the issue on which certiorari was granted—the constitutionality of the death penalty under the Federal Constitution—is now moot in his case. Accordingly the writ of certiorari is dismissed.

¶2

Certiorari dismissed.

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