Twenty-four years after a Yosemite lodge handyman was sentenced to death for the brutal murders of a Eureka mother, her daughter and a family friend from Argentina during what was supposed to be a sightseeing trip to the iconic park, the California Supreme Court has denied his appeal.
A jury found Cary Stayner, now 64, guilty of the killings of 42-year-old Carole Sund, 15-year-old daughter Juli Sund and 16-year-old Silvina Pelosso, and determined he was sane at the time of the crimes before rendering the final judgment following a third proceeding. He was officially sentenced in December of 2002.
In the appeal, Stayner raised a litany of issues spanning every aspect of the case, including that his Miranda rights were violated and he faced coercive tactics during an FBI interview during which he confessed. He also claimed judicial bias by the trial court across the span of the proceedings, from voir dire to the penalty phase, as well as jury misconduct.
Chief Justice Patricia Guerrero penned the more than 200-page decision that meticulously details Stayner’s challenges and the court’s responses, writing: “Defendant asserts the cumulative effect of the trial court’s errors requires reversal. We have assumed error, but found no prejudice” regarding his claims.
“We conclude that the cumulative effect of these assumed errors does not warrant reversal. The judgment is affirmed in its entirety,” Guerrero wrote in the April 30 opinion signed off on by five other justices.
Justice Kelli Evans offered a partial dissent, writing that while Stayner was “found to have committed three murders with five special circumstances after a fair trial” and she concurred “in the judgment affirming the jury’s guilt verdicts as well as the jury’s finding that Stayner was sane at the time he committed these crimes,” the penalty phase “was not, under our precedents, fair.”
The main thrust of Evans’ concerns centered on the trial court judge denying a defense request to follow up after the prosecutor’s questioning of an expert witness who testified that Stayner had “‘excellent’” potential for making a positive adjustment to prison life.” The prosecutor asked whether correctional facilities “employ young female staffers,” to which his response was yes. But the defense was not allowed to ask further questions in the wake of that answer.
“In short, Stayner was wrongly prevented at the penalty phase trial from offering evidence to rebut the inference that he would pose a danger to female correctional officers, and then he was wrongly left defenseless when the prosecutor relied on that inference near the end of his closing argument to urge a verdict of death,” Evans wrote.
“These circumstances, fairly read, should do more than ‘raise some concerns,’” the justice said, citing the majority opinion with the quote, and amounted to “a violation of due process.”
Evans added, “What the majority’s abbreviated analysis of prejudice overlooks is that a defendant’s future dangerousness is one of the most significant (if not the most significant) of the factors juries consider in deciding whether to sentence a defendant to death.”
In the dissent, the justice also disagreed with the majority’s assessment of the trial court’s decision not to hold an inquiry into information brought forward by the defense after the sentence that “at least two seated jurors failed to disclose … they had been molested” on a questionnaire during the selection process.
“During penalty phase deliberations, these jurors relied on their previously undisclosed experiences to discount evidence in the mitigation case that Stayner had been molested as a child,” Evans wrote, noting that “Juror No. 3’s own declaration stated that Juror No. 7 and Juror No. 10 told the other jurors that they had been molested as children but had not, as a result, murdered anyone.”
“For the foregoing reasons, I would affirm the guilt and sanity verdicts but reverse the death judgment and remand for further proceedings,” the justice wrote.” To the extent the majority opinion fails to recognize the prejudicial error that occurred at the penalty phase trial, however, I respectfully dissent.”
According to a timeline in the opinion, Carole and Juli Sund and Pelosso were last seen Feb. 15, 1999, after renting the movie Jerry Maguire from the lodge where they were staying. That night, Stayner, an employee, used a ruse to enter their room, where he killed Carole Sund and Pelosso before kidnapping and assaulting Juli Sund.
The three were reported missing two days later after failing to meet up with other family members for a trip to Arizona, setting off a frantic search effort.
Nearly a month later, the car that Carole Sund had rented was found burned-out on a remote dirt road with her and Pelosso’s remains inside and personal items, including cameras that recorded their travels, scattered nearby. A week later, an FBI special agent who had interviewed Stayner in the initial days of the investigation received a letter with a map of an area by a reservoir in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Juli Sund’s body was there the next day.
It wasn’t until five months later that the case broke. After being brought in for questioning in connection to another murder, the beheading of 26-year-old Yosemite naturalist Joie Armstrong that July, he confessed to the killings. Stayner pleaded guilty to Armstrong’s death in a separate case and was sentenced to life in prison.
A synopsis of victim impact statements in the Supreme Court opinion states Pelosso’s mother described her as a good student “who loved the outdoors, was a competitive roller-skater and had a great relationship with her family.”
She also related how she had become close friends with Carole Sund when the mother of four was an exchange student in Argentina in 1973 and they stayed in touch, leading to her daughter going to Eureka in December of 1998 to stay with the Sund family. The 16 year old had been set to return home the same month her body was found.
The summary also states Carole Sund’s mother said her daughter was “outgoing” and “the family organizer for gathering” and spoke about how the 42 year old “was active in adoption organizations and was a court-appointed special advocate for abused and neglected children.”
Similarly, according to the opinion, the grandmother described Juli Sund as “outgoing, kind and thoughtful,” and the summary states Carole Sund’s father related that Juli was “a lot like her mother” and had two wishes, “to own and drive a car and to have a boyfriend … she would never have either.”
The opinion also quotes Juli’s grandmother as saying the family had been “desperately hoping” she had survived, but, after receiving news her body also had been found, “You give up. This big hole is going to be in your life forever.”
In California, all cases in which the ultimate punishment is handed down are automatically appealed to the state Supreme Court and it’s not unusual for decades to pass before one comes before the seven-member panel.
Stayner also filed a habeas corpus petition with the court in March of this year, which would need to be resolved before an execution date could be set. But, for now, all executions are on hold after Gov. Gavin Newsom signed an executive order placing a moratorium on the death penalty in the state.
“The intentional killing of another person is wrong and as governor, I will not oversee the execution of any individual,” Newsom said in a March of 2019 announcement. “Our death penalty system has been, by all measures, a failure. It has discriminated against defendants who are mentally ill, black and brown, or can’t afford expensive legal representation. It has provided no public safety benefit or value as a deterrent. It has wasted billions of taxpayer dollars. Most of all, the death penalty is absolute. It’s irreversible and irreparable in the event of human error.”
According to the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, the executive order “also calls for withdrawing California’s lethal injection protocols and immediately closing the execution chamber at San Quentin State Prison. The order does not provide for the release of any individual from prison or otherwise alter any current conviction or sentence.”
Even before Newsom’s order, executions in the state were few and far between, with the last one taking place in 2006. As of May 18, according to the CDCR, there are 573 condemned inmates in the state, all of whom have been transferred out of San Quentin Prison’s death row over the last two years.
Stayner is currently being held at Pelican Bay State Prison in Crescent City, according to the agency.
Kimberly Wear (she/her) is the assistant editor at the Journal. Reach her at (707) 442-1400 ext. 105 or kim@northcoastjournal.com.
This article appears in In it for the Glory.
