Justices Overturn Death Sentence

The California Supreme Court on Monday overturned the death sentence of a Whittier man who murdered his elderly next-door neighbors and burglarized their home in 1986.

The court said Larry Lucas, now 54, had inadequate legal counsel during the penalty phase of his trial and was abused as a child.

Lucas killed Mary Marriott, 75, and her husband, Edwin Marriott, 85.

Lucas contended that he did not remember the murders and said that they may have been the result of a daylong binge on amphetamines, cocaine and heroin.

In commuting Lucas’ death sentence to a life term, the court said his attorneys did not present any evidence during the penalty phase of the trial as to why the jury should spare him.

The justices said Lucas suffered severe emotional and physical abuse by his parents as a child. The court said he was housed in an institution for abused and neglected children that was staffed by violent adults.

“A reasonable probability exists that the jury would have found in this evidence some explanation for the petitioner’s criminal propensities and some basis for the exercise of mercy,” Chief Justice Ronald George wrote.