Death Penalty Measure Proponents Submit 800,000 Signatures to Qualify for November Ballot

Spokespersons for the SAFE Campaign, a coalition of groups and individuals opposing the current death penalty, announced the filing of 800,000 petition signatures Thursday morning at four simultaneous news conferences in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Sacramento and San Diego.

The final number of signatures goes far and above the 504,000 required to qualify the measure for the November 2012 ballot.  If passed, the measure would replace the death penalty with a punishment of life in prison with no chance of parole.

Proponents believe that the act will save the state hundreds of millions of dollars.  The initiative also sets aside $100 million of the budget savings – $30 million a year, for three years – to solve open rape and murder cases.

At the Sacramento press conference held in the courtyard of the Secretary of State’s office, campaign manager Natasha Minsker of the ACLU announced that “the SAFE California act will be on the November 2012 ballot.”

“This is a truly historic achievement,” she said to a group of media covering the press conference, “this is the first time ever that California voters will be given the opportunity to replace the death penalty with life without the possibility of parole.”

“California voters are ready to replace the death penalty with life in prison with no chance of parole,” said Jeanne Woodford, SAFE California spokesperson and former warden of San Quentin, who oversaw four executions. “Those of us in law enforcement know that the best way to prevent crime is to solve it. Replacing the death penalty with a punishment of life in prison without parole will free up funds for critical tools like DNA testing in the shocking 46% of murder and 56% of reported rape cases that remain unsolved in our state every year.”

“The Safe California Act will improve life here in California by saving literally a billion tax dollars over five years – money that can be used for public safety and public education,” Ms. Minsker added.

Ron Briggs is the son of Senator John Briggs, sponsor of the 1978 Briggs Initiative authorizing California’s death penalty.  Ron Briggs is now an El Dorado County Supervisor.

“In 1978 my family put forth the Briggs Initiative which enacted the death penalty by a 72 percent vote,” he said on Thursday.  “Back then we wanted swift and certain justice with the death penalty.  We wanted to empty death row.  We wanted to make a statement to all would-be evil doers that California would take seriously your murders and we would execute you.”

“We thought we were creating a system of safety and savings,” he said.  “Instead what we ended up doing was creating a fiscal monster that cost about $4 billion over the last 30 years.  We spent $187 million a year on absolutely nothing.”

“Instead of emptying death row in 1978, we tripled the population,” he continued.

He told the story of a woman who “in 1981 survived being abducted, raped, thrown down a gully naked and shot multiple times. For good measure, her attacker threw rocks at her head. On that same day, the man murdered the woman’s friend.”

“Because of the death penalty system we put in place, the survivor, a fragile mother of three, had to find courage to face her would-be killer again after he weaseled a technical appeal 26 years after the crime, forcing a full retrial here in El Dorado. It yielded the same verdict, and it took a huge human toll on his living victim,” said Ron Briggs.  “If the murderer had been sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole rather than to death, the long cycle of appeals could have been avoided.”

“Had I known then what we do today, I would have pushed for strong life sentences without the possibility of parole,” he said. “I still believe that society must be protected from the most heinous criminals, and that they don’t deserve to ever again be free. But I’d like to see them serve their terms with the general prison population, where they could be required to work and pay restitution into the victims’ compensation fund.”

Don Heller wrote the death penalty initiative for Senator Briggs in 1977, which appeared on the November 1978 ballot.

“When I wrote it, I was absolutely certain beyond any doubt that what I was writing was morally right, was constitutionally sound, and would bring justice to people that deserved to be executed for heinous homicides,” he said.  “I’ve gone from certainty to change.”

He cited “empirical evidence that the death penalty was not working as intended” as his impetus for changing his views.  “It doesn’t work and it costs a fortune,” he added.

Mr. Heller noted that under the law, we have only executed 13 people at the cost of over $330 million per execution.  “We are causing huge expenditures of money for no reason,” he said.

“The process takes years.  I never thought it would take that long for an execution.  I never thought it would take that much money,” he added.

He also cited the cost of numerous cases that had to be remanded back for trials due to the ineffective assistance of appointed counsel.

“The hallmark of our constitution is having effective counsel at trial,” Don Heller said.  “It’s protected by the constitution and in effect it doesn’t work, it doesn’t do that.”

Don Heller said he was defending a death case and he can see the costs.  The law requires two lawyers on a death penalty case and the majority of the defendants require publicly financed attorneys.  This helps raise the cost of trying a death penalty case.

Don Heller would add, “I’ve gone from certainty of the righteousness and correctness of the death penalty to being absolutely convinced by empirical evidence it’s time to abolish it – save a lot of money for our state and use that money to find and prosecute defendants who have committed rapes and murders and also use some of that money for education.”

Lorrain Taylor would also speak at the Sacramento press conference.  She was the mother of twin boys, Albade and Obadiah who were gunned down in 2000 at the age of 22.  Their killer remains at large today.

“Often when we hear about people talk about the death penalty as if every family member [of a murder victim] approves of it, but that’s not true,” Ms. Taylor told the press.  “The death penalty brings no comfort.  It takes away from our community without giving anything to police and local investigators who are trying to solve crimes.”

She said that because of this, often the family members who have lost loved ones have to live with the knowledge of knowing that the killers of their loved ones are still at large.  She cited statistics that 46 percent of murder and 56% of rapes go unsolved every year in California.

“At the same time we are closing schools and laying off workers instead of cutting back on the death penalty dollars that we spend,” she said.  “We need to put our limited resources into preventing violence by finding its roots in all neighborhoods for all mothers and sons.  We need to provide support for the children and grandchildren that are left behind.”

It was noted that a recent poll showed about 68% of the voters in California still support the death penalty.

However, Natasha Minsker argued, “Polling consistently shows that when voters are given the choice between the death penalty and life without parole, majorities of California voters prefer life without the possibility of parole.”

She added: “That’s exactly what the initiative does.  It is the first time ever that voters will be given the choice between the death penalty and life without the possibility of parole.”

Others argue that housing the current death row population for the rest of their lives would cost just as much money as you save by ending the death penalty.

“For over 34 years there were efforts to speed up the death penalty and make it faster and cheaper,” Ms. Minsker responded.  “You have heard two men who thought they were doing that 34 years ago.  They were wrong.  For 34 years every effort to make the death penalty move more quickly in California and cost less money has actually had the opposite effect.”

Don Heller noted several of the increased costs, which included additional court-appointed attorneys, a separate penalty phase which includes a mitigation inquiry and the automatic Supreme Court appeals required under the law. He said, “The Supreme Court under the constitution hears every death penalty appeal directly.”

“You could save hundreds of millions over a period of time just with the litigation costs of it,” he argued.  “The opponents are misstating the housing costs… on death row it’s three times the cost of a general population inmate, so we’re saving a huge amount of money on the incarceration side.”

While there is clearly a strong fiscal argument built into this initiative, there is also the human side of the story, as well, and that is the possibility of executing an innocent person.

We now know that we have made mistakes and put innocent people into prison, sometimes for decades.

In San Francisco, Obie Anthony who was freed in October, after spending 17 years in prison and later being exonerated, said, “As someone who was wrongfully convicted in California, I know that our criminal justice system makes terrible mistakes.”

He added, “Innocent people just like me have been executed in this country – there are 140 exonerees just from death row. The risk is just too high. The only way to prevent the ultimate injustice is to support SAFE California.”

“We can very easily execute an innocent person,” Don Heller said, adding that he believes that one has already been executed in the State of California.

“The procedure, like every other thing governed by man, is fraught with danger of mistake,” Don Heller said.  “Courts have released over 120 who have been convicted and sentenced to death around the country and the case was reversed because of DNA evidence that proved the defendant was innocent.”

“If you think about the possibility of executing an innocent person, even putting aside the cost, it’s horrific,” he said somberly.

Mr. Heller would later state he believes the innocent person executed to have been Tommy Thompson.

“I believe that Tommy Thompson was innocent of the rape-murder that he was convicted of and sentenced to death,” Mr. Heller said in response to a question from the Vanguard on Thursday.  “Thompson’s case relied almost exclusively on the testimony of an informant, aptly named Mr. Fink.”

“Mr. Fink was a professional informant, he had actually put several people on death row by people confessing to him in jail and it just so happened that Mr. Fink always benefitted from this confession that was made to him,” Mr. Heller continued.

“I think that Tommy Thompson was innocence,” he said. “He was executed under the law I wrote and that has stayed with me since 1998 that I participated in the execution of an innocent man.”

The campaign claims they raised $1.5 million for the gathering of signatures and believe they will have ample funding to run the type of campaign needed in this state to win.

—David M. Greenwald reporting

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