commuted to life in prison. It would also mean that if any person was ever charged with a murder committed in California before 1972, the death penalty could not be imposed. The United States Supreme Court in Aikens v. California, 406 U.S. 813 (1972) denied an appeal of a death sentence because: Later in 1972, the people of California amended the state constitution by initiative process, superseding the court ruling and reinstating the death penalty. Rather than simply switch to the federal "cruel and unusual" standard, the amendment, called Proposition 17, kept the "cruel or unusual" standard, but followed it with a clause expressly declaring the death penalty to be neither cruel nor unusual. Due to the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Furman later the same year declaring most capital statutes (including the one in California, but excluding others like the one in Rhode Island) in the U.S. to be unconstitutional, plus extensive appellate and habeas corpus litigation in capital cases, no death sentences were carried out in the state until 1992. That year, Robert Alton Harris was executed in the gas chamber. In a 1978 concurring opinion, Justice Mosk expressed his dismay at the response of the California electorate to Anderson: Anderson's sentence was later commuted, and, in 1976, he was paroled and moved to Seattle. He died there in 1999 at the age of 62. Documentation The incident was documented in The Hub Shootout: San Diego's Unbelievable Four-hour Firefight, which revisits the events and sequelae of San Diego's longest (at the time, four hours) armed siege/shootout at the Hub Loans & Jewelry Company. A newspaper editor died of a heart attack. Over a thousand rounds were exchanged betweend the shooter and a SWAT team. The "murder case would eventually make California judicial history and keep Charles Manson and Sirhan Sirhan from the gas chamber." See also Capital punishment in California References Citations Bibliography External links Opinion of the Court Retrieved April 7, 2008. Opinion of the Court (Registration Required) Ninth Circuit Capital Punishment Handbook California state case law Cruel and Unusual Punishment Clause and death penalty case law Capital punishment in California 1972 in United States case law 1972 in California