Top California court denies Cary Stayner’s death penalty appeal, decades after murders

Top California court denies Cary Stayner’s death penalty appeal, decades after murders

Reading Time: 2 minutes California’s highest court on Thursday denied Cary Stayner’s death penalty appeal in a murder case that made national headlines and reverberated in Merced and the rest of the Central Valley. Stayner, a Merced native, was convicted for murdering three people in Yosemite in 1999. In his death penalty appeal, he argued that his confession to authorities was coerced and judicial bias violated his rights during the trial proce…