{"id":99,"date":"2026-04-20T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-20T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/california.shuster.info\/?p=99"},"modified":"2026-04-20T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2026-04-20T12:00:00","slug":"people-v-bertsch-hronis-death-sentence-self-representation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/california.shuster.info\/?p=99","title":{"rendered":"People v. Bertsch and Hronis \u2014 Convictions Affirmed, Bertsch Death Sentence Stands, but Hronis Death Sentence Vacated Because of Later Changes to Self-Representation Law"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Case<\/dt>\n
People v. Bertsch and Hronis<\/dd>\n
Court<\/dt>\n
Supreme Court<\/dd>\n
Date Decided<\/dt>\n
2026-04-20<\/dd>\n
Docket No.<\/dt>\n
S093944<\/dd>\n
Status<\/dt>\n
Reported \/ Citable<\/dd>\n
Topics<\/dt>\n
death penalty, capital trial, mental competency, self-representation, Faretta rights, dual juries, joint trial<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n<\/div>\n

Background<\/h2>\n

In December 1985, John Anthony Bertsch and Jeffery Lee Hronis kidnapped Linda Canady from a Sacramento-area shopping center parking lot, drove her hundreds of miles south, raped and sodomized her, killed her, and dumped her body in an irrigation canal. The two men were on the run after a string of armed robberies and were looking for a vehicle to steal. The case took years to resolve, in part because Hronis fled and was not extradited from Georgia until 1990. Both men were ultimately tried together in Sacramento County before separate juries \u2014 a procedure known as a “dual jury” trial that allows codefendants with different evidentiary issues to share most of the trial while keeping certain testimony segregated.<\/p>\n

Both juries convicted both defendants of murder, rape, and kidnapping, and found true special-circumstance allegations of kidnapping-, robbery-, and rape-murder, which made each man eligible for the death penalty. The juries also found a sodomy-murder special circumstance against Bertsch. Separate penalty-phase juries returned death verdicts against each defendant.<\/p>\n

The case raised an unusual issue specifically as to Hronis. Hronis told his attorneys and the trial court repeatedly that God had spoken to him and assured him he would be “delivered” \u2014 found not guilty or otherwise spared. He refused to cooperate with mitigation preparation for the penalty phase, declined to take any plea offer, and ultimately asked to represent himself for the penalty phase. The trial court, after extended competency proceedings and multiple expert evaluations, found him competent to stand trial, granted his request to proceed without counsel for penalty, and let him present essentially no defense. He was sentenced to death. Both defendants’ cases came to the California Supreme Court on automatic appeal.<\/p>\n

The Court’s Holding<\/h2>\n

Chief Justice Guerrero, writing for a unanimous court, affirmed all guilt-phase convictions for both defendants and affirmed Bertsch’s death sentence. The court rejected a long list of challenges from both men: claims that severance should have been granted instead of using dual juries, that the dual-jury procedure invited speculation, that courtroom conditions were too cramped, that codefendant testimony was prejudicial, and that the original competency determinations were inadequate. On each, the court found no error or no prejudice meeting the demanding standard for reversing a capital conviction. In particular, the court reaffirmed that California’s competency standard under Penal Code section 1367 is consistent with federal due process, and that a defendant’s stubborn unwillingness to cooperate is not the same as inability to cooperate.<\/p>\n

The court reversed Hronis’s sentence \u2014 including the death judgment \u2014 based on subsequent changes in the law governing a defendant’s mental competency to represent himself at trial. Even though Hronis was competent to stand trial under the standards in place in 2000, the law has since recognized that a defendant who is mentally competent to stand trial may nevertheless lack the higher capacity needed to conduct his own defense, and that trial courts have discretion to deny self-representation when mental illness creates a serious question about the defendant’s ability to do so. Because the trial court did not have the benefit of those evolved standards when it permitted Hronis to represent himself for the penalty phase, his sentence cannot stand and the case must be retried as to penalty.<\/p>\n

The court also vacated any unpaid balance of the $10,000 restitution fines imposed on each defendant, applying a recent statute (Penal Code section 1465.9, subdivision (d)) that limits collection of certain criminal financial obligations.<\/p>\n

Key Takeaways<\/h2>\n