In an exclusive report, The Californian's justice reporter, Jessica Logan, writes:

Kern County Superior Court Judge Michael Bush today served defense attorneys on the Vincent Brothers case an order to show why they should not be held in contempt of court.

Bush wants to know if defense attorneys Michael Gardina and Anthony Bryan mishandled evidence regarding a crash with a boy on a bicycle in Ohio.

Gardina declined to comment after Brothers’ sentencing this morning. Bryan left without comment.

You can read the entire story in our special coverage of the Brothers case.

What do you think of the judge's order?

Kern County Superior Court Judge Michael Bush sentenced convicted murderer Vincent Brothers to death Thursday.

Brothers has an automatic appeal under California law.

Brothers, a former vice principal, was convicted May 15 after a three-month trial of killing his wife, Joanie Harper; their three children, Marques, Lyndsey and Marshall; and Joanie Harper’s mother, Earnestine.

The same jury voted May 29 that Brothers should be sentenced to death.

Bush made an independent assessment of the case and decided Vincent Brothers deserved to die.

The judge also denied a defense motion for a new trial.

Bush ordered that Brothers be transferred to San Quentin State Prison within 10 days.

"You shall suffer the death penalty at San Quentin," Bush said, adding that the warden at the prison is to hold Brothers during the appeal process.

A jury decided Tuesday that Vincent Brothers should receive the death penalty for killing his three children, his wife and his mother in law.

The jury deliberated for 6 hours over three days.

They deliberated for about 30 minutes this morning.

The judge will  have to confirm the sentence.

Brothers was found guilty of the five murders on May 15.

The judge will review the jury's recommendation on Sept. 27.

The jury reached a verdict this morning in the penalty phase of the Vincent Brothers' case.

The verdict will be announced at about 10 a.m.

The jury deliberated for just a half an hour before the jurors announced they had reached a verdict.

They have deliberated for about six hours.

They started deliberating on Wednesday.

The jurors decided Brothers was guilty of killing his wife, three children and mother-in-law on May 15.

The jurors will be dismissed early Thursday in the Vincent Brothers trial.

The court is dark Friday.

Jurors will resume deliberation on Tuesday.

They have been deliberating for about five hours over two days.

Brothers has already been convicted of killing his wife, three children and mother-in-law.

The jury will now have to decide if Brothers should live the rest of his life in prison or if he should be executed.

The jury has begun deliberating in the penalty phase of the Vincent Brothers trial.

The jury has already convicted Brothers of killing his wife, three children and his mother-in-law.

The jury will now decide if Brothers should live or die.

“We would never be here in Nepoleonic France,” defense attorney Anthony Bryan said, digressing into a history lesson.

“There is always the hint from those that worship authority...and make it comfortable for folks like you in your situation...It’s a necessity argument. One of the greatest prime ministers of England was William Pitt,”

He goes on to quote Pitt.

“Necesity is the plea...it is the crea of slaves,”

“No one here proposes freedom for Vincent Brothers,”

“We’re asking you to allow him to spend the rest of his life in prison,”

“And you have the record of a long life before you,”

“At the very worst, you have found that there was a horrible weekend in his life of 41 years, if you have no lingering down, but all the rest of that 41 years was honorable discharges... excellent bachelor’s degree, credential, mater’s degree, this is not a wreckage of the past case. His years are in his favor.”

“What else would you have him do?” “Did he go to the wrong college, should he have gone to the Airforce, should he have gotten a Ph.D.”

“We know Joanie and her immediate family were religious, but so was Vincent’s,” Bryan said.

“Brothers was reading scripture to some athletes, that he separated some athletes from a fight,” Bryan said.

“Counsel suggests that was a different person, that is convenient. That is Vincent Brothers, the same person that is in this courtroom,”

“It is not only, not to be scorned, it is to be praised,” Bryan said.

Bryan apologizes if anything he said has aggrevated the jurors.

“Do not hold it against Vincent Brothers,”

“I want to remind you of one more thing you will see in the jury instructions,” Bryan said.

“You can vote for life if you wish,”

“There were some attempt to attack them, and belittle them,” Bryan said.

“In the last analysis, you can vote for life just because you want to vote for life,” Bryan said.

“We have a horrible crime and nothing I have said or done has been intended to minimize,” Bryan said.

“It’s been the most community effecting event since I lived in Bakersfield,” Bryan said. “I don’t in any way minimize it,”

“I think there is lingering doubt, as to whether they convicted the right person,”

“All things considered, I ask you to vote for life in prison,”

Bryan said the laceration to Kern’s face was “superficial.”

“The prosecutor suggested incorrectly that you can solve the problems of the world,” Bryan said.

“A civilized society, when a member or a group of members such as yourselves the jury have the opportunity to kill or not we generally like to think that we have rules and there are things that we will do and consider before we make such a momentous decision. That is what we are doing here. And everybody here agreed to listen...even though we all agreed we would never get to the penalty phase unless you agreed beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant killed his entire family...It’s horrible.”

“I guess there must be a law against moving across country...I don’t know of anybody who has ever been sentenced...because they have moved from the east coast to the west coast which do create communications problems.”

“There aren’t a lot of people who can produce the quantity and quality of friends from back east who were willing to come from back east,” Bryan said.

“Relatives who are teachers and ministers, but because he didn’t, he was a teacher he taught during the school year and he taught many summer schools, but you are being to asked why he did not go back and forth all the time. Look at the volume of pictures seized from his apartment.”

“You have heard from many hard working teachers who thought the world of Vincent,”

“And you are supposed to ignore what they say. I don’t know how that works out with the timeline people presented,”

“It isn’t a different human being that was Vincent Brothers,” Bryan said. “They described him exactly as the teachers described him,”

“On their side, superficial facial lacerations,” Bryan said.

“The entire presentation of the prosecutor was to try and create the burden of proof that does not exist. To make you think that you should start off with death in your mind and that I then have to move you somehow away from death and that is absolutely untrue. That is not my burden. There is no favorite. Death is not favorite. There is no assumption from death. I do not have to move you from death, hopefully, if you follow the law...It is your decision. It is sometimes subteranean me suggesting to you that you do not have to make this decision. And because this is sucha  horrible decision and such a horrible sent of facts it is comfortable to accept a theory of law that allows that permits us to avoid making that decision, but that is where we are. There is no presumption of death that I somehow have to superhumanyly have to move you away from. It is up to you. You have gotten some kind of rules that the prosecution has read to you...These are fairly concise and the judge did read them to you.”

“Let’s not forget the special arrangement he made in Marques’ school room,.. that is all stuff that can be considered mitigating.”

“If we are going to do a weighing process from the penalty phase...nothing I have said should be interpretted as anyone not recognizing the horrific nature of this crime,”

Bryan asked what the United States would be known for if archeologists studied us. “it isn’t art and it isn’t archetecture,”

“We are what we are because of things we are doing right now,” Bryan said. “That is what is so strange about this place. That is why more people try to get in here than any other place that ever existed. They don’t go to listen to Bethoven, they come here because of our system of our, because of our system of freedom,”

Defense attorney Anthony Bryan begins his closing arguments.

“Naturally I disagree with the verdict you reach. My opinion doesn’t mean anything,” Bryan said.

“There is anything thing that you can consider and that is lingering doubt,” Bryan said.

Bryan reminds the jurors that they all said they could consider life in prison even if Brothers were convicted of the murders.

Bryan, who is known for his loud arguments, is speaking so quietly that he can barely be heard.

“I think one of the things that shows the extreme weakness of the prosecution’s penalty phase case is, I want you to look at the hospital records,” Bryan said. “See if there is anything there that resembles the description as described by Ms. Kern,” Bryan said.

“We have another witness to that, Keith Powell,” Bryan said. “This is a department head at Cal State Bakersfield, he has no reason to lie.”

“There was quite a bit of contact with Margaret,” Bryan said. “It is not uncommon in this society that the contact with a child is limited by the fact that the parents no longer get along.”

“The prosecutor wants you to believe that the defendant should receive among other reasons, because of his contact with (Shann Kern),”

Bryan shows an article The Californian wrote about Brothers because of his participation in the community.

Bryan reminded the jurors that Brothers was an “outstanding” teacher and vice-principal.

“One of the defendant’s abilities is his ability to get along with others,” Bryan said.

“You do not complete high school and college and graduate school and a complete tour with the army and with the marines if you cannot get along well with others,”

“If Mr. Calloway saw Mr. Brothers that weekend at the house is it at all possible to believe that he had done what she says he did,” Bryan said.

“I know you’ve determined otherwise but I must argue lingering doubt, I think that is an enormous amount of doubt,” Bryan said.

“You have three inherintly incredible...clay of the worst sort,” Bryan said.

Bryan said that every time a bug was found, their ranges expanded.

The prosecution bug expert said bugs she would expect to see were not there, Bryan said, if the trip west were made.

“Dr. Kimsey said there should have been white butterflies, they weren’t there,” Bryan said.

“Try driving across the west in the middle of the summer without getting those things on your car and in the air intake system.

“Why was Vincent Brothers able to give the same kind of attention to his own daughter Margaret...why did Mr. brothers attend his niece Tanya’s eighth grade graduation and not his own daughter’s,” Green said.

“It was that they only know Vincent Brothers in a professional capacity, none of them, not one of them knew him. This man did not have any friends...If the truth be told nobody knew him. The co-workers testimony mirrored that of the women he slept with...he really had no friends,”

Green said this was the same as his childhood friends. “That he was studious, polite, shy, athletic, but not one of them had any contact with him in adulthood...they came here to stand up and testify from memory...the boy that these men described is not the same man you’ve seen and heard from in this courtroom the man who testified in this courtroom...They don’t want to believe he could have changed....but each and every one of you know better and you said so in your verdict.”

“Would you expect them to believe that someone they know and liked 25 years ago would would do something like this?” Green told the jurors. “Who would believe that someone they know is capable of what happened in this face, capable of killing their entire family.”

“They did not see him often and when they did there is no evidence their relationship is close,” Green said, speaking so quietly, her voice was at times inaudible from the audience.

“Is any of that enough to cause you to return a verdict of life...does any of what they said mitigate waht he did. Does anything they said make you think Brothers deserves to spend the rest of his life eating, drinking, laughing,”

“The boy who did that 30 years ago, that person does not exist any more, you know that,” Green said. “The man you see before you is the face of evil. There is no sugarcoating that. Is there anything about what the defendant’s 25 witnesses offered that cause you to say this is an extenuating circumstance that justifies voting for life,”

“My answer is no, never,” Green said.

“Vincent Brothers took an oath to tell the truth and he looked you in the eye and he lied” Green said. “He made up a story that he was in Columbus Ohio when he was in (California) killing his family.”

“When Mr. Bryan argues lingering doubt, you remember that he lied,”

Green said Brothers’ demeanor on the stand will erase any lingering doubt.

Green shows the jurors the video of the crime scene the day the Harper family was found.

The courtroom stood still as Green played the video that panned past the bodies and through the house.

“When Mr. Bryan gets up here....In a loving home often pictures are displayed on the wall...when Mr. Bryan brings up all these pictures the defendant had just remember the photos he had were not out, were not displayed...They were in a bin on the floor in that apartment.”

Green told the jurors that one juror said life in prison gives you time to take care of your soul.

“I think while that may be true as to some people...it is not true of Vincent Brothers...your conscience is a part of your soul and you can’t take care of your sould if you don’t have a conscience.

“When Vincent Brothers walked in that room with the intent of killing his entire family that is what he saw was three sleeping children,”

Green displays once again the photo montage of the family.

“In the space of an afternoon the lives of three children were brought to an end...the hopes and dreams of the people they would become were gone,”

“If you don’t believes these crimes impacted the community...you need only look at that photo and the testimony of Vincent Brothers who said more than 2,000 people attended that memorial,” Green said.

Bryan will ask you “to show Vincent brothers mercy and to allow him the rest of his life behind bars. I have heard it said that justice is getting what you deserve and mercy is getting what you don’t deserve. Vincent Brothers deserves as much mercy as he showed his victims and that is none,” Green said.

“If not the death penalty for this case than which case, if not the death penalty for these victims, for which victims, if not the death penalty for Vincent Brothers,”

“In the killing of these women and these children...I will not stand up here and talk about how many times they are shot because I know you know...Only the most soulless coward could commit crimes such as these. Are there any more innocent victims,”

Green said that if they don’t vote for the death penalty they will be sending a message to the community that this is tollerated.