The California Supreme Court affirmed a judgment of sentence of death. The court held that the prosecutor’s concurrence in the trial court’s conditional release on his own recognizance of a material witness a month prior to trial could not be deemed a lack of due diligence, even though the witness ended up fleeing prior to being called to testify.
Jerry Bunyard repeated solicited Earlin Popham to kill Bunyard’s pregnant wife. Popham finally agreed. He went to Bunyard’s house when Elaine Bunyard was nine months pregnant and shot her in the face with a shotgun, killing both the victim and her full-term fetus. The Bunyards’ seven-year old daughter discovered her mother’s body later that day.
