Murder Conviction Upheld (Cal. Ct. App., 6th Dist.)

The California Court of Appeal (6th Dist.) upheld a first degree murder conviction today, (1) holding there was no error in excluding third party culpability evidence; (2) rejecting the defendant's claim that collection of his blood when he was a state prisoner for inclusion in the state’s convicted offender DNA database violated the Fourth Amendment; and (3) holding there was no error in the trial court's failure to instruct that felony-murder special circumstance requires the jury to find that he had the specific intent to kill. Justice Eugene M. Premo authored the opinion in People v. Adams, no. H024504.