Death penalty overturned for white supremacist who killed OC gang leader – Orange County Register

Michael Allen Lamb in 2007. (Photo by Cindy Yamanaka / The Orange County Register)

The California Supreme Court this week overturned the death sentence of a member of a white supremacist gang in Orange County who executed a former accomplice for violating gang rules by speaking on television.

The justices unanimously overturned the special circumstance penalty that made Michael Allan Lamb eligible for the death penalty. The Supreme Court was bound by a 2021 state law that makes proving special circumstance penalties more difficult. But the murder conviction remains.

The case against Lamb, 50, has been remanded to Orange County Superior Court, but prosecutors have not yet decided whether to reopen the gang-related charges and seek the death penalty again.

Lamb remained at the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility in San Diego on Friday.

He was prosecuted in 2008 by then-Deputy District Attorney Ebrahim Baytieh, now a judge. Baytieh is under scrutiny for failing to disclose evidence in another murder case he prosecuted – for which he was fired. Both murders involved prison informants.

Lamb’s case was cited in court documents calling for the dismissal of the murder charge against Paul Gentile Smith due to suppression of evidence. The Smith documents raise questions about whether suppression of evidence was Baytieh’s practice in cases involving informants, such as the one involving Lamb.

The jury found Lamb guilty of ambushing Scott “Scottish” Miller, a founding member of Public Enemy Number One (PEN1), in an Anaheim alley in 2002 because Miller had revealed gang secrets on a FOX news program.

Miller’s face was blurred on the screen, but his distinctive tattoos and pit bull were visible.