San Jose Mercury News | April 25, 2011

1980 Death Sentence Set Aside

“Three decades after being sentenced to death for a San Jose liquor store murder, Marvin Pete Walker Jr. may have gotten his ticket off death row and perhaps out of San Quentin altogether. In a recent ruling, an Oakland federal judge set aside Walker’s 1980 murder conviction and death sentence, concluding that he had been improperly shackled in front of the jury throughout his trial, tainting the verdict and violating legal precedent barring the shackling of defendants without exceptional circumstances. The ruling means that one of San Quentin’s longest-serving death row inmates could be spared execution or even freed.”