By David M. Greenwald
Executive Editor
Woodland, CA – A few weeks ago I received an email forwarding me a poll on voter attitudes on the California Death Penalty law. While not much is known about the pollster, it appears to be right leaning.
The pollster argued, “In California, the Left’s narrative has been that majority voter attitudes were changing against the death penalty law. This polling disproves that narrative.”
But what caught my attention—and was the reason it was sent to me in the first place—was one of the examples focused on Carlos Dominguez.
The polling found:
Seventy-seven percent thought the death penalty was justified for mass murder, 76 percent for 
violent crimes against children, 77 percent for the “UC Davis murderer”, 75 percent for the Boston Bomber, 73 percent of the Idaho Murderer. 73 percent for terrorism. (Maybe to illustrate the absurdity of this poll, 49 percent thought it was justified for perjury. Really? Or maybe it refers to cases where the killer perjures himself? I don’t know.)
In any case, the six top questions illustrate that the public, at least according to this poll, is strongly in favor of the death penalty for the worst of the worst.
But that’s not how it works.
Death penalty scholars have repeatedly pointed out that the death penalty “is not reserved only for defendants who have committed what society considers the “worst-of-the-worst” crimes.”
In his 2015 dissenting opinion in re: Glossip—a man who is on death row from Oklahoma and for whom the Republican Attorney General has argued for his innocence—Justice Stephen Breyer concluded, “[W]hether one looks at research indicating that irrelevant or improper factors—such as race, gender, local geography, and resources—do significantly determine who receives the death penalty, or whether one looks at research indicating that proper factors—such as ‘egregiousness’—do not determine who receives the death penalty, the legal conclusion must be the same: The research strongly suggests that the death penalty is imposed arbitrarily.”
In some respects, he is correct, the death penalty is imposed arbitrarily. But in other ways, it is quite predictable—research shows people of color are more likely to receive the death penalty, but, even more clearly, the death penalty is far more likely imposed when the victim is white.
Another huge problem—ineffective defense. The death penalty is almost exclusively reserved for people whose defense attorneys have not had the resources to make it a fair fight.
Take the case of Anthony Ray Hinton, a man exonerated after 38 years on death row in Alabama.
When his attorney met with him, “Yeah, I’ll look into it. They’re only paying me $1,000 for this, and hell, I eat $1,000 for breakfast.”
His attorney could only afford to pay for a one-eyed ballistics expert who was easily discredited on the stand.
Then there is the case of Andre Thomas, who suffered from delusions that told him to kill his wife and child.
In the weeks leading up to the murders, Thomas had suicidal thoughts, drank heavily, and used cold medication as a recreational drug. In jail a few days after his arrest, Thomas pulled one of his eyes out of its socket.
The jury would reject his insanity defense and sentence him to the death penalty.
Jail officials claimed he was malingering, but, believing that the government was spying on him through his good eye, Thomas would gouge out his other eye, and eat it.
Andre Thomas might be the most disturbing case, but it’s not isolated. Clearly Thomas needs to be in hospital, but the system has failed to recognize the depths of his insanity.
That leads back to the Dominguez case. It was a horrible experience for the community, those days in April when beloved community members were violently taken from us, but as horrible as those crimes were, what we have learned about Dominguez demonstrates why the death penalty is probably no longer an option.
The DA initially said they would look into the death penalty. They also initially believed apparently that Dominguez was competent to stand trial.
But over the course of the week-long trial that was set to resume today—but the DA conceded Thursday of last week—we learned about Dominguez’s descent into schizophrenia. The mental illness robbed this young, up and coming kid who had overcome much adversity to be on a path to success at UC Davis, and turned him into not only a shell of his former self, but ultimately a very dangerous one.
What we learned unfortunately is that Dominguez is not the face of radical evil at all, but yet another very ill individual who is in need of a hospital bed not a cage.
Will he get that? The system is not set up for people like Dominguez. The standard for insanity is someone not able to know right from wrong.
That’s a very high standard. It is hard to know if even Andre Thomas, who was suffering severe delusions, really knew right from wrong, or simply had a warped sense, based on his illness, of what reality was.
That’s the next problem for the Dominguez case.
But the polling on his case demonstrates the exact problem with the death penalty. Dominguez will receive strong defense, he has a strong case in mitigation, and it seems very unlikely that the death penalty will be even sought, let alone imposed, let along implemented.
The people who normally get the death penalty are not the worst of the worst, but rather those with qualifying crimes who don’t get the representation that others do.
The “death penalty” is far more likely to be perpetrated by black criminals, vs. white criminals. And in fact, is more likely to be wielded by black criminals against white victims, than the other way around.
For the purpose of . . .?
I would suggest you do some research before commenting.
I’d suggest you do some research before writing articles.
Right!
There’s your problem. Both the attitude and the amount.
Oddly-enough, only some lawyers make this much money. Certainly not public defense attorneys.
I just finished an internship at the California Appellate Project which assists appellate lawyers for people sentenced to death. These themes came up repeatedly, and from my limited exposure to that world, I did come away with the impression that we have a terribly inefficient capital justice system. Egregious errors happen at every step of the process.
Now, that being said, I have encountered cases that I felt merited the death penalty. Adolf Eichmann remains the only person executed by order of a civilian court in the State of Israel. That feels like an appropriate situation for capital punishment, and it would be difficult to see anything less than death as sufficient justice.
One thing worth pointing out viz a viz this particular case is that the standard for “insanity” that you’re referring to is the standard for winning an acquittal by reason of insanity. That’s why the bar is so high. It doesn’t just get you out of a death sentence it exonerates you completely (though you’ll probably find yourself being committed to a mental institution). Using a mental disturbance as a mitigating factor to avoid a death sentence is much more straightforward. That’s not to say it always works, but you certainly don’t have to show that the defendant didn’t know right from wrong.