FILE - This Sept. 21, 2010, file photo shows the death chamber of the new lethal injection facility at San Quentin State Prison in San Quentin, Calif. Only 30 people were sentenced to death in the United States in 2016, the lowest number since the early 1970s and a further sign of the steady decline in use of the death penalty. The number is a sharp drop from the 49 death sentences last year and just a fraction of the peak of 315 in 1996, according to a report from the Death Penalty Information Center, a nonprofit organization that opposes capital punishment and tracks the issue. (AP Photo/Eric Risberg, File)
The state supreme court is upholding the death sentence for the man who killed Sonoma Sheriff’s Deputy Frank Trejo in 1995. The ruling came Monday after Robert Scully’s defense team argued to overturn his conviction saying the trial should’ve been held outside of Sonoma County due to the media coverage. However, Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye wrote for the court “We conclude defendant’s claims of error lack merit, and therefore affirm his convictions and death judgment.” In March of 1995, Deputy Trejo investigated a suspicious truck that had stopped in a parking lot on Highway 12. Scully was armed with a shotgun and forced the deputy to the ground before shooting him in the head.