Appeals Pay Off: Death Sentence Is Overturned

“This is a case where justice cries out for the death penalty,” 19-year-old Robert M. Bloom Jr. told a Van Nuys jury in 1983.

It was a convincing argument, as the same panel had convicted the intense, articulate young man of murdering his father, his stepmother and his 8-year-old stepsister.

Awakened by a loud argument at 4 a.m. on April 22, 1982, two neighbors saw Bloom shoot his father in the head at the front door. The young girl had been stabbed 23 times with a pair of scissors.

He was “a spoiled rotten kid who was jealous of his sister because he wasn’t the only one getting all the attention anymore,” a Sun Valley neighbor told a Times reporter the day after the murders. Bloom had been angry at his father ever since he had remarried, neighbors said.

During his trial, Bloom insisted on testifying and said his father had shot the stepmother. In a rage about that, Bloom said, he retaliated by killing his father.

The jury did not believe him. During the sentencing hearing, Bloom insisted on representing himself, and he demanded the ultimate punishment.

He had no remorse for his crime and blamed his father. “He was executed. He got everything he had coming,” young Bloom told the jurors. “Don’t slap my hand. I deserve to die. I want to die.”

The jury gave Bloom part of what he asked for: a sentence of death.

Last December, however, 14 years after Bloom’s death sentence was imposed, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned his conviction and sentence.

Why? “Ineffective assistance of counsel,” the three-judge panel ruled.

Prosecutors say the startling reversal vividly illustrates how federal appellate judges can nullify the state’s death penalty law.

Beginning in 1984, San Francisco attorney Dennis Riordan filed appeals on Bloom’s behalf with the California Supreme Court, but all were rejected. An appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1989 also was denied.

Riordan then filed an appeal in federal court in Los Angeles, citing five claims of constitutional violations. In December 1993, U.S. District Judge J. Spencer Letts wrote a long opinion rejecting all the claims.

Nearly four years later, the case came before the 9th Circuit Court.

“This is another case of severe childhood abuse ending in tragedy,” its opinion begins. Citing evidence turned up by Riordan, the judges said the Bloom family was “severely dysfunctional” and that young Bloom was “physically abused” by his father.

His trial lawyer, Sherwin Edelberg of Encino, had failed to stress his client’s mental imbalance, the judges ruled. “We are satisfied that had it not been for the deficient performance of Bloom’s trial counsel, there is a reasonable probability that the verdicts would have been different,” the appeals court concluded.

Its opinion was signed by Judge David R. Thompson of San Diego, an appointee of President Reagan. It was joined by Judges Stephen Reinhardt of Los Angeles, an appointee of President Carter, and Michael D. Hawkins of Phoenix, a Clinton appointee.

Last week, state prosecutors appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which reviews only about 1% of the cases it receives. The justices rejected the appeal.

Los Angeles County prosecutors say they plan to retry Bloom.