Healdsburg Tribune, Number 299, 21 October 1930 — JUDGE DISSENTS DEATH VERDICT [ARTICLE]

JUDGE DISSENTS DEATH VERDICT

J?»/ United Presn

SAN FRANCISCO. Oct. 21. The state supreme court, while admitting the appellant had been mentally deficient, handed down an opinion here yesterday, affirm-1 ing the sentence of death pronounced upon Ernest A. Dias in Alameda county. Dias, who was the first man in the history of the state to be sentenced to hang twice on the same day, one for killing Stanley Montaro and once for the slaying of Mary Munoz, who were shot during an attempted hold-up, caused, by his appeal the breaking of an- j other precedent when Associate Justice William H. Langdon, in a dissenting opinion, urged the governor to grant Dias executive clemency. “It appears monstrous the state should execute one of its own wards, who would never have been set at liberty and who, at the time of this tragic event, was still under surveillance as a mental defective,” Langdon said. Dias was once confined to the Sonoma Home for the feebleminded. Justice Langdon’s suggestion that the governor act was on the ground that the court is legally powerless to interfere.