Tuesday, Dec. 18, 2009 • State Supreme Court upholds death penalty for suspect convicted of killing Griffith

Publisher’s note: This story originally appeared in the Tuesday, Dec. 15, 2009 edition of the Lassen County Times.

In an 86-page opinion, the California Supreme Court unanimously affirmed, in a 7-0 vote, the death penalty for Dennis Newton Ervine who was found guilty of the first degree murder of Lassen County Sheriff deputy Larry Griffith during an incident in the Ravendale area in March 1995.

Lassen County District Attorney Bob Burns said he expects Ervine to engage in further appeals including the United States Court of Appeals for the ninth circuit.

After a motion for a change of venue was granted, a Sacramento County jury found Ervine guilty of the first-degree murder of Griffith and the attempted willful, deliberate and premeditated murder of Commander William Freitas, deputy Wayne Aldridge and deputy Henry Mahan.

The jury also found special circumstances to be true that Ervine committed the murder to avoid arrest and he committed the murder by means of lying wait.

On March 16, 1996, the jury returned with a verdict of death. The court denied Ervine’s request for a retrial and to modify the penalty verdict. He was also sentenced to three consecutive life sentences in prison without the possibility of parole and an additional term of 16 years.

In the opinion, which outlines evidence presented in the trial and the court’s responses to Ervine’s appeal, the state rejected numerous claims made by the defendant including his state and federal constitutional rights to counsel were violated and that his conviction must be reversed because of asserted violations of state statutes protecting the rights to communicate confidentially with his attorney.

The court also rejected numerous claims of prosecution misconduct.

In some cases, the court agreed with Ervine’s appeals, but found those arguments had no merit to the case.

Ervine also claimed errors during the trial should result in the overturning of the death penalty, but the court disagreed saying, “The few non-prejudicial individual errors we have found are no more compelling when considered in combination and defendant does not explain how these errors would reinforce a compelling theory of prejudice or undermine the prosecution’s case against him. Their cumulative effect does not warrant reversal of the judgment.”

The defendant also said the jury should not have been permitted to rely on the existence of the special circumstances of murder to avoid arrest as an aggravating factor in addition to the special circumstances of murder of a peace officer in the line of duty because it “overlapped with and duplicated the latter,” which is an argument the court said also failed.

In the morning of March 2, 1995, Griffith, Mahan, Freitas and Aldridge responded to Ervine’s Ravendale residence following a report of a domestic violence incident.

According to the opinion, Ervine barricaded the downstairs windows and watched the officers arrive from an upstairs bedroom window. As the officers exited their vehicle, he fired his .30-.30 Winchester rifle and continued to do so until a bullet from one of the officers grazed his head.

The opinion said the deputies took cover when the defendant began shooting, but Freitas, Griffith and Mahan were able to return fire. Griffith was shot in the head during the incident which the document said lasted about 10 to 15 seconds

After a several hour standoff, the surviving deputies were evacuated under the cover of a dump truck and Ervine surrendered several hours later.