San Jose Mercury News

February 09 

Death sentence rejected in '78 San Jose murder

By Howard Mintz,

A federal appeals court on Friday overturned the 23-year-old death sentence of convicted Santa Clara County killer David Ghent, most likely sparing the sixth-longest-serving death row inmate in California from execution.

 Without the ruling, he might have been the next inmate put to death by the state.

 Capping one of the state's lengthiest death penalty legal odysseys, a unanimous three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals  set aside the special circumstance conviction of rape that made Ghent eligible for a death sentence. Ghent, an unemployed machinist, stabbed to death his neighbor, 25-year-old Patricia Bert, in her San Jose home in 1978.