California Supreme Court Upholds Death Penalty for Cult Leader Who Killed 5 in Bay Area

SAN FRANCISCO—The California Supreme Court on Jan. 22 upheld the death penalty for Glenn Taylor Helzer, the leader of a small cult who was convicted of five murders in Contra Costa and Marin counties. In a unanimous 85-page ruling, Chief Justice Patricia Guerrero rejected a challenge to discredit the evidence from a sweeping search of Helzer’s Concord home, as well as a defense argument that a trial error might have occurred when a juror candidate who was against the death penalty was dismissed. “We reject defendant’s claims and conclude blanket suppression of the evidence is not warranted,” Ms. Guerrero wrote in the opinion. “A review of the entire record before us and the totality of the officers’ conduct does not reveal the kind of flagrant disregard of Fourth Amendment protections that might justify the extraordinary remedy of wholesale suppression of all seized evidence.”...