State Supreme Court justices Thursday overturned part of the death penalty conviction of a white supremacist gang leader in an Orange County killing because of a new state law.
Michael Anthony Lamb, 50, was sentenced to death in 2008 for killing 38-year-old fellow “Public Enemy Number One” gang member Scott Miller because he did a television news interview about the gang, prosecutors said.
The supreme court upheld the murder conviction, but remanded the case back to a trial court for another trial on the gang special circumstances that made it a capital case.
Co-defendant Billy Joe Johnson, 61, was also sentenced to death in November 2009, which was affirmed by the state high court in 2016. Another gang member, Jacob Anthony Rump, 48, was sentenced to life in prison without parole Oct. 5, 2007.
When Johnson went on trial for the Miller killing he was serving a life term for the 2004 killing of Cory Lamons in Huntington Beach with a claw hammer.
Johnson lured his childhood friend Miller to his execution by other gang members on March 8, 2002. It was three months after Miller did what he thought was going to be an anonymous interview on Fox11 News about the gang.
Though his face was obscured, other gang members recognized him by his tattoos and his dog, who was seen in the interview.
Johnson asked Miller for a ride from a party in Costa Mesa to Anaheim to buy drugs to set up the execution-style shooting of the victim, prosecutors said.
Three days after Miller’s execution, Lamb and Rump were arrested following a police pursuit in which Lamb opened fire at Anaheim Police Sgt. Michael Helmick with the Miller murder weapon, according to the high court’s ruling. Prosecutors said Lamb was the gunman who killed Miller.
The new state law regarding gang enhancements requires prosecutors to prove a crime benefited a gang beyond just reputational value. For instance, prosecutors must show the benefit to the gang was specific such as it made money for the organization or was revenge against a rival.
The state high court ruled that since the law is retroactive Lamb should get a new trial on the gang enhancements because at his trial the expert only testified to how the killing was carried out to increase the gang’s reputation for violence.