by Andrew Love
Tani Cantil-Sakauye, after one year as the Chief Justice of the State of California, has concluded that the state’s capital punishment system is “not effective” and requires “structural changes” that the state cannot afford. Her predecessor, Ron George, who was Chief Justice for 15 years, came to the same conclusion, describing California’s death penalty scheme is “dysfunctional.”
These are two conservative jurists, appointed by Republican Governors, who with their fellow justices on the California Supreme Court have voted to uphold death sentences at an unprecedented rate. But they have become disillusioned when confronted with a costly, time-consuming, unreliable and unworkable system that serves no useful purpose while draining judicial resources and diverting needed funds from true public safety programs.
As the California Commission for the Fair Administration of Justice concluded after its extensive review in 2008 of the state’s death penalty system, death sentences are unlikely ever to be carried out (with extremely rare exceptions) because of a process “plagued with excessive delay” in the appointment of post-conviction counsel and a “severe backlog” in the California Supreme Court’s review of death judgments. According to CCFAJ’s report, the lapse of time from sentence of death to execution constitutes the longest delay of any death penalty state.
California has a death row population close to 720, by far the largest in the nation. But it has not carried out an execution since 2006, while the myriad problems with the state’s lethal injection protocol continue to be litigated.
Only a few weeks ago, a state court held that the revised rules for carrying out executions are invalid because state officials again misapplied California’s administrative law which sets out the proper rule-making procedures. As a recent New York Times editorial stated: “The process it used exemplifies California’s capital-punishment system – badly broken and in need of being permanently shut down.”
The Times also referenced an “exhaustive study released last summer which found that since 1978 capital punishment has cost California about $4 billion.” This is the report by Arthur Alarcon, long-time judge of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal, who, together with law professor Paula Mitchell, determined that California’s death penalty system is currently costing the state about $184 million per year. They concluded that “since reinstating the death penalty in 1978, California taxpayers have spent roughly $4 billion to fund a dysfunctional death penalty system that has carried out no more than 13 executions.”
The views of the present and former Chief Justice reflect, as the Los Angeles Times reports, “a growing frustration with capital punishment even among conservatives and a resignation that the system cannot be fixed as long as California’s huge financial problems persist.”
This includes Don Heller, the author of California’s death penalty law. He wrote in an op-ed for the Los Angeles Daily News: “I never contemplated the staggering cost of implementing the death penalty: more than $4 billion to date and approximately $185 million projected per year in ongoing costs.” Heller now believes that “the cost of capital punishment takes away funds that could be used to enhance public safety.”
And Jeanne Woodford, the former warden of San Quentin State Prison, who presided over four executions, now speaks out against the death penalty, has become the executive director of Death Penalty Focus, and is working hard on the SAFE California Act, a ballot initiative that would replace the death penalty with life without parole. As Woodford asserts, the death penalty is expensive, ineffective in preventing crime, and brings with it the ever-present risk of executing an innocent person.
And Gil Garcetti, who sought and obtained many death judgments when he was the District Attorney of Los Angeles: “California’s death penalty does not and cannot function the way its supporters want it to. It is also an incredibly costly penalty, and the money would be far better spent keeping kids in school, keeping teachers and counselors in their schools and giving the juvenile justice system the resources it needs. Spending our tax dollars on actually preventing crimes, instead of pursuing death sentences after they’ve already been committed, will assure us we will have fewer victims.”
Judges, prosecutors and jurors across California, mirroring a nationwide trend, have become less enthused about capital punishment. In 2011, California saw its death sentences drop by more than half to ten, the lowest number since 1978.
Andrew Cohen, in the Atlantic Monthly, suggests the reasons:
Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty less often because of the prohibitive costs of capital cases. Judges and jurors have new sentencing options (like life in prison without parole). Politicians can no longer deny the unsettling number of wrongful convictions that have sent hundreds of innocent people to death row over the years. The Supreme Court has sent unmistakable signals to lower court judges to rein in trial excesses. And most of the civilized world has turned against the practice.
Cohen correctly notes that “California is one ballot initiative away from finally packing in its wretched excuse of a capital scheme.”
The New York Times editorial explains that, “California’s system of government-hobbled-by-
“They” means “us.” Signatures are currently being gathered to put the SAFE California Act on the November 2012 ballot. If it passes it would replace California’s multi‑billion dollar death penalty with life imprisonment without parole and require those convicted of murder to work and pay restitution to victim families through the victim compensation fund. It would also set aside $100 million in budget saving for local law enforcement for the investigation of unsolved rape and murder cases.
Andrew Love is a Bay Area death penalty lawyer who has represented men and women on California’s death row for over 22 years. He also writes the blog Fair and Unbalanced.
I’m not quite sure why the NY Times is weighing in on CA’s death penalty regime; what about NY’s death penalty regime – how’s that working? Just curious…
Perhaps because the New York Times while it has a city and state desk is primarily a national paper.
“Politicians can no longer deny the unsettling number of wrongful convictions that have sent hundreds of innocent people to death row over the years.”
Andrew, have you any more on this contention? Many people of the “eye for an eye” viewpoint would come around if convinced that dozens of innocents have been executed–not that even one should be acceptable–let along hundreds. That innocent people have been convicted is an article of faith for many death penalty critics, but i’ve never located any documentation.
I’m talking about proof of innocence, not just reasonable doubt. Not just that someone claimed credit for the crime or that some poor evidence or unfair prosecution tactics or that witnesses have recanted. Granted that combinations of these would be pretty convincing to most people and that even independently would result in new trials if the executed happened to be still alive. (The recent case of bad arson investigating won’t do the trick because it doesn’t prove anything except how inept, heartless and cruel–and efficient–the Texas system has become.)
Got anything along these lines, cases thai prove our system is executing innocent people in any significant numbers?
From [url]http://www.americanbar.org/publications/human_rights_magazine_home/irr_hr_fall97_deathpen.html[/url]
[quote]In the last four years, 17 Death Row inmates in the nation have been found innocent and freed. Seven of those men were in Illinois. Many legal advocates in the state and around the country are dismayed that the state’s justice system could have repeatedly failed so miserably. Throughout every one of the men’s ordeals, corruption, flawed investigations, and inadequate legal representation plagued them. And in the cases of eight of the nine men, it took the intervention of people completely outside of the justice system for them to win back their freedom.[/quote]
Or take a look at this website:
[url]http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/executed-possibly-innocent[/url]
Or try wikipedia:
[url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrongful_execution[/url]
And these are only the ones we know about, which is probably the tip of the iceberg. I remember vividly a case in which the FBI sent an innocent man to prison (a father of four), knowing the man was innocent, in order to protect an informant who later went on to kill 3 people. When an FBI agent involved in the scandal was called to testify before Congress, he was not the least apologetic. The innocent man spent 25 years in prison. The justice system is just too imperfect…
JustSaying
“I’m talking about proof of innocence, not just reasonable doubt. Not just that someone claimed credit for the crime or that some poor evidence or unfair prosecution tactics or that witnesses have recanted. Granted that combinations of these would be pretty convincing to most people and that even independently would result in new trials if the executed happened to be still alive”
To the best of my knowledge, in our legal system, the burden of proof rests with the prosecution, that one is innocent until proven guilty, and that the defense need only establish reasonable doubt. Your post would seem to suggest that you do not believe this should apply to those who have perhaps been wrongly convicted. Or am I misreading your position ?
[quote]”Your post would seem to suggest that you do not believe this should apply to those who have perhaps been wrongly convicted. Or am I misreading your position ?”[/quote]medwoman, sorry I wasn’t clear. I’m asking the author of this piece, Andrew Love, for some research I haven’t been able to locate myself: proof that “hundreds of innocent people” have ended up on death row.
My “position” is that I could convince lots of death penalty supporters that their position is wrong if I could prove my belief that we’re killing innocent people. But, I haven’t been able to locate examples that do more than raise questions of whether the executed person was guilty.
So, the requirement that concern you don’t indicate my position, just the type of data I’m looking for. Is that an adequate explanation?
“Is that an adequate explanation?”
Got it .
medwoman, here’s a better explanation of why I’m hoping for a response from guest author Andrew Love. Maybe before you joined us, Rich Rifken (noted death-penalty supporter and the most dedicated researcher who writes here) and I chatted:[quote][u]Rich[/u]: “This was not a death penalty case at all. But it still is a horrific mistake to steal 25 years from the life of an innocent person.”
[u]JS[/u]: “How, then, would you label taking the life of an innocent (death-penaltied) person? Or leaving his family without him, but with generations of undeserved stain that never gets corrected?
Granted that we never can know how many innocent, but convicted, men and women we’ve executed over the years. But, what percentage of wrongful executions in our justice system do you consider acceptable?
My own relative/example, Margaret Scott, finally was declared innocent in 2001–somewhat late to help her.
More recent, but lesser known crimes and trials, have left innocent people with no one caring to reconsider their guilt because the capital punishment system can’t withstand declarations of such error and because, well, they’re dead anyway.”
[u]Rich[/u]: “I will wait until someone post-1977 is executed and there is compelling evidence of his innocence to ‘label’ that. I know there are many people who were convicted and sentenced to die who were subsequently found not guilty. I don’t know of anyone who has been executed who was clearly innocent.”
[/quote] So, as careful as Rich is about finding out what’s really behind things, I’m convinced he’s not looked hard enough to find out about innocents killed by the state.
I figured Andrew Love, with all his listed contacts, research and background, would get right back to me to the requested information. But, with no response forthcoming, I’m wondering if he’s a David pseudonym (or just not a regular [u]Vanguard[/u] reader)?
Andrew Love has no way of knowing we ran his piece, I requested a piece from the anti-death penalty folks, I was hoping to get a piece from a retired Judge, but that did not come through and they sent me this one, so I ran it. It’s not a local piece and Mr. Love as I said likely has no idea who we are.