Nov. 2
CALIFORNIA:
Calif. Death Penalty Opponents Say It's Too Costly
Death penalty opponents in California are trying a new argument this year:
Abolish capital punishment because the perpetually cash-strapped state just
can't afford it.
Voters in the state with the nation's largest death row will decide Tuesday
whether to repeal the death penalty. Proponents of Proposition 34 say
incarceration and litigation costs are too high for too little return.
California has spent about $4 billion since capital punishment resumed in 1977,
yet just 13 inmates have been put to death.
An independent analysis says the state would save between $100 million and $130
million a year by converting death sentences to life-without-parole, money
supporters say could be put toward public schools and local law enforcement
investigations.
"The death penalty is a giant rathole where so much of California's budget is
thrown with no discernible benefit," said Dionne Wilson, whose husband, a
police officer, was killed by a man now on death row.
A supporter of Proposition 34, she said the death sentence given to her
husband's killer "didn't change anything. I still don't have a husband and my
children and family are devastated."
Opponents say the argument is merely a smoke screen by the American Civil
Liberties Union and other longtime opponents of capital punishment.
Promoting Proposition 34 as a budget-saving mechanism is a convenient way to
achieve their goal of ending capital punishment and minimizes the rights of
victims, say the law enforcement and victims' rights groups who are waging the
campaign against the initiative.
"He deserves the ultimate punishment for what he did to my daughter," said Marc
Klaas, whose 12-year-old daughter, Polly, was abducted, raped and killed by
Richard Allen Davis in 1993. "The crimes these characters have committed are so
beyond the pale that you need an extreme punishment."
Klaas, an outspoken Proposition 34 opponent, acknowledged the state's death
penalty is broken because so few inmates have been executed. But rather than do
away with it, he said, the appeals process should be streamlined so more
executions can be carried out, especially one for his daughter's killer.
3 former California governors - 2 Republicans and a Democrat - have spoken out
against the initiative. One, Republican Pete Wilson, co-wrote the official
argument against Proposition 34 that says the ACLU, which is pushing the
initiative, is largely responsible for the high costs of housing death row
inmates and the lengthy appeals process.
That the group would focus on money to be saved if capital punishment ended is
hypocritical, he wrote. Repeal also could lead to higher court costs because
prosecutors use the possibility of a death sentence as a way to get defendants
to plead guilty to a lesser sentence and thus save costs, said Mike Genest,
part of the No on 34 campaign.
Citing one study, he said eliminating that bargaining chip could lead to 4
times as many criminal trials.
Genest, a former state finance director, also said the roughly $100 million a
year that might be saved by repealing the death penalty is a negligible amount
in a state general fund that typically is more than $90 billion.
"If you're considering voting 'yes' on this because it saves money, that's
ridiculous," he said. "It's either incorrect, it won't save money or it's
irrelevant - it won't save enough money to have any consequence."
If Proposition 34 passes, it would be only the 2nd time in U.S. history - and
the 1st time since a 1964 election in Oregon - that voters have repealed a
state's death penalty, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
A total of 17 states have repealed the death penalty, 16 through their
legislatures. 5 state legislatures have done so in the last 5 years, including
Connecticut this year.
A Field Poll in late September found Proposition 34 failing to gain majority
support among likely voters, with 42 % in favor. Yet the poll also found a
softening of support for the death penalty overall, with 45 % saying California
should retain capital punishment. The rest were undecided.
Proposition 34 would strike capital punishment from the state's books and
shutter death row at San Quentin State Prison, the country's largest at 725
inmates. The sentences would be converted to life in prison without the
possibility of parole.
Opponents of Proposition 34 argue that eliminating the death penalty makes the
state more dangerous, ignores the wishes of many crime victims and allows some
of the most notorious killers, including Scott Peterson, Richard "the Night
Stalker" Ramirez and Charles Ng, to escape justice.
Their slogan is "mend it, don't end it." A more streamlined process, including
using a single execution drug rather than the current three-drug mixture, will
speed up the process and limit expenses, they say.
A federal judge in 2006 halted executions in California and ordered prison
officials to overhaul the state's procedures, which included carrying out
lethal injections in San Quentin's former gas chamber.
Since then, the corrections department has built a new death chamber that
resembles a bright and antiseptic hospital room and adopted new written
protocols. Those protocols, though, are the subject of a state judge's order
barring executions until they are properly adopted according to California's
administrative code.
The last time voters weighed in on the question was 1978, when 71 percent
approved expanding the death penalty law passed the previous year by the
Legislature. Since then, public opinion surveys have shown consistently that
California voters support executions.
Among those supporting the ballot initiative is a victim of a violent crime, J.
Rose Steward. She was abducted, raped and left for dead by Dean Phillip Carter,
who went on to kill four other women and received the death penalty in 1990. He
is still on Death Row, and Steward morally opposes his execution.
"I don't want blood on my hands like he has," she said.
(source: Associated Press)
*****************************
Death-penalty measure's support jumps----Voters favor Prop. 34 by 7 points,
Field Poll finds
A ballot measure to repeal California's death penalty and replace it with life
in prison without parole has gained support in the last week and leads by 45 to
38 % among likely voters in the final Field Poll before Tuesday's election.
The poll, conducted Oct. 25-30, was the first to show a lead for Proposition
34, which had trailed 42 to 45 % in the last survey in mid-September. Polling
also found that a majority agreed with one of Prop. 34's major premises - that
the death penalty is more expensive than life without parole - and a plurality
said innocent people are executed "too often."
Some other recent statewide polls have reported Prop. 34 trailing by as much as
7 % points. But Field Poll director Mark DiCamillo said his organization's new
survey was more up-to-date and found that the measure's margin of support had
widened by 6 % points in a single week.
The poll also coincided with the first ads aired by the Yes on 34 campaign,
which has raised $7 million, nearly 20 times as much as the law
enforcement-backed opposition.
Impact of ads cited
Yes on 34 campaign director Natasha Minsker said the poll results indicate
voters are getting the message.
"When they hear our message and they hear the facts, they are much more likely
to support the initiative," she said. "I think it really shows that the voters
are learning the death penalty is all cost and no benefit."
Peter DeMarco, spokesman for the No on 34 campaign, noted that the measure's
support remains below the critical 50 % threshold, and predicted that most of
the still-undecided 17 % would vote against it.
"Given people's opinions about the death penalty, a million dollars in TV ads
is not going to make the difference," he said. "It still trails, and it's going
to lose."
The Field Poll also reported that labor unions appear to be winning their fight
against Prop. 32, which would prohibit them from using payroll-deducted dues -
their sole source of income - for political campaigns.
The business-sponsored initiative trails 50 to 34 %, with the remaining 16 %
undecided, the poll reported. The mid-September survey had shown a smaller gap,
38 % in favor and 44 % opposed.
Previous ballot measures to restrict spending of union dues on political causes
were defeated in 1998 and 2005. The Prop. 32 campaign will probably be the most
expensive on Tuesday's ballot, with more than $60 million spent by each side.
First vote in 34 years
Prop. 34 is Californians' 1st vote on the death penalty since 1978, when a 71 %
majority approved expansion of a capital punishment law passed by state
legislators the previous year.
Since executions resumed in 1992, 13 prisoners have been put to death, while
726 condemned inmates remain housed in the nation's largest death row.
Executions were halted in 2006 by a federal court order, still in effect,
requiring the state to make numerous improvements in its procedures for
administering lethal injections.
Statewide opinion polls continue to show support for the death penalty, but
when the same voters are asked which punishment they consider appropriate for
murder, slight majorities have preferred life without parole over death.
Sponsors of Prop. 34 have stressed the severity of a life sentence with no hope
of release and made the cost of the death penalty their leading issue - $130
million a year more than a life-without-parole system, according to the
Legislature's fiscal analyst, a figure that opponents dispute.
The new Field Poll found, for the first time, that a strong majority - 53 to 31
% - agreed that the death penalty was more expensive than life without parole,
a question that produced an even split a year ago.
Breakdown of numbers
The poll found that men were evenly divided on Prop. 34 while women favored it
by 43 to 35 %. The survey also found divisions along religious lines -
Protestants were strongly opposed to the measure, while other faiths and
nonreligious adherents supported it. There were differences along racial lines
as well, with white non-Hispanics and Asian Americans about equally split and
Latinos and African Americans overwhelmingly in support.
Bay Area voters were more inclined to back Prop. 34 than those in any other
region, favoring it by 53 to 30 %.
Field Research Corp. said the telephone survey of 751 randomly selected likely
voters had a margin of error of 3.6 % points.
(source: San Francisco Chronicle)
********************
Judge Weighs Death Sentence in Jamiel Shaw Murder; Pedro Espinoza could get
death or life in prison in the 2008 slaying of Jamiel Shaw, a promising
football playerBy Jason Kandel and Toni Guinyard
The family of a standout high school football player shot to death execution
style in 2008 gathered at a Los Angeles courthouse on Friday where a judge was
expected to weigh the death penalty for their son's killer.
A judge is expected to decide whether to sentence Pedro Espinoza, a 23-year-old
gang member, in the fatal shooting of Jamiel Shaw II.
A jury in May recommended death for Espinoza, who was convicted of 1st-degree
murder for what prosecutors said was the "cold-blooded, calculated execution"
of Shaw outside the teen's Arlington Heights home on March 2, 2008.
4 days before voters are expected to decide whether to abolish the death
penalty, Shaw's family stood in solidarity at the courthouse, voicing support
for the maximum penalty currently allowed by law.
"If you murdered somebody, you should be murdered too," said Jamiel Shaw Sr.,
who said he was voting against Prop. 34 on Nov. 6 which would abolish
California's death penalty. "My son got the death penalty, but we can't give it
to them? Because it hurts? They don't think it didn't hurt my son?"
When asked if she views the sentencing as the end of the ordeal, Jamiel Shaw's
mother, Anita said, "It better be. Enough is enough."
Jamiel Shaw's aunt, Althea, pushed for the death sentence.
"It's not like we'll go 'Whoo!' if he gets he gets the death penalty," she
said. "We just feel that it's appropriate for the way Jamiel was murdered."
Prosecutors say Espinoza attacked Shaw, who was 17, because he was black.
Prosecutors also said Espinoza mistook him for a gang rival based on the red
Spider-Man backpack Shaw was wearing. Shaw's family wore red at the courthouse
in support.
Shaw was an honor's student at Los Angeles High School. He was was not in a
gang. Rutgers and Stanford were among the universities recruiting him.
During the court hearing on Friday, Judge Ronald Rose denied Espinoza's motions
for a new trial and a new attorney, saying he had ineffective counsel and he
didn't get a fair trial.
During the sentencing phase of the trial, an Espinoza attorney M. David
Houchin, said he was "not trying in any way to excuse Pedro Espinoza" but asked
jurors to recommend a life prison sentence for his client, according to City
News Service.
"My plea for Mr. Espinoza's life is not a plea for leniency," Houchin said,
arguing that the death penalty "should be meted out to the worst in our
society."
Shaw's parents have campaigned for a law that would enable police to arrest
undocumented immigrant gang members and them turn in to federal authorities.
Espinoza was living in the United States illegally and had been released from
jail on a conviction for brandishing a weapon before the Shaw slaying.
The judge could sentence Espinoza to either death or life in prison without
parole. The decision comes four days before California voters decide whether to
abolish the death penalty.
(source: NBC Los Angeles)
*****************
Man accused of 2009 toll plaza slayings welcomes death penalty
Nathan Burris told a jury in Martinez Thursday that he has no regrets about
murdering his ex-girlfriend and her friend at the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge
toll plaza in August 2009, and said he still feels hatred for the victims.
Burris, 49, of Richmond, who is representing himself in his capital murder
trial in Contra Costa County Superior Court, addressed jurors from the witness
stand.
The defendant is eligible for the death penalty since he is charged with the
special-circumstance allegations of lying in wait and committing multiple
murders.
He is accused of killing 51-year-old Deborah Ross, of Richmond, a bridge toll
collector, and 58-year-old San Leandro resident Ersie "Chuck" Everette, a
Golden Gate Transit bus driver.
While Burris has confessed his guilt throughout court proceedings over the past
3 years and did so again Thursday morning, he has not pleaded guilty.
"I have from day one admitted I was the shooter," Burris said.
Burris also testified that he is "not looking to blame any of my actions on
drugs or a bad childhood" and is not claiming that the killings were committed
in self-defense.
Instead, he said on the witness stand, his decision to follow and murder his
former girlfriend and the man he believed she was dating was an act of
"self-preservation."
Burris, who was working as a long-haul truck driver, testified that he became
suspicious of Ross' relationship with Everette while he and Ross were still
living together. He testified that at one point he was threatened by Everette,
although he did not explain how.
On the evening of Aug. 11, 2009, Burris testified, he spotted Everette's pickup
truck parked in the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge toll plaza parking lot, where
Ross worked.
After slashing the truck's tires, he left the area and then returned after
checking to ensure there were no California Highway Patrol officers near the
parking lot, he testified.
"If you're going on a mission like I'm going on, you want to be successful ...
you want to get it done," Burris said.
The defendant testified that when he saw Everette in the truck, he ran up and
shot him multiple times in the head and chest.
Next, he testified, he turned his attention to Ross, who was working her shift
in one of the bridge's tollbooths.
"My hate and passion and anger got the better of me," he said. "There's a thin
line between love and hate, and that's what it was for her."
Burris said he shot Ross in the arm, then ran around the tollbooth and opened
fire again.
He said Thursday morning that he felt no regret or remorse at the time of the
slayings, and feels none today.
"I have more hate for her than anything," he told the jury. "When you commit
adultery, you ought to be put to death."
Burris testified that he has asked the district attorney's office for the death
penalty for himself and is not bothered by the consequences, calling
California's death penalty process "laughable."
"If this is my retirement, so be it -- I'm living comfortable," Burris said of
his cell, which he referred to as his "apartment."
The defendant apologized to the jury for what he described as the wasted time
they have spent at his murder trial and blamed the district attorney's office
for dragging its feet.
Burris' testimony will resume on Monday.
(source: KTVU News)
************************
Serial killer's lone survivor torn by conscience; Hoping to move on from the
1984 attack, Rose Steward backs Prop. 34 to end the death penalty, but fears
offending families of Dean Carter's other victims.
Rose Steward woke up, certain someone else was in her bedroom. She saw a man, a
red bandanna over his face and a knife in his hand, illuminated by a street
light. She began to shake violently.
For the next 5 hours, the man raped and choked her, twice to the point she lost
consciousness. She was certain she would die. She grieved she was too young,
only 22, and that her murder would destroy her mother.
She struggled against panic and fought with her wits, pretending to like her
attacker, cajoling him and sympathizing with him. When he finally left at dawn,
she kissed him goodbye - then ran for help.
After leaving Steward, Dean Carter went on a killing rampage, strangling,
raping and stacking bodies in closets. Police say he murdered 5 women, from San
Diego to Oakland, within 18 days. Steward's testimony helped prosecutors win
two death sentences against Carter.
28 years after the murders, Carter remains on death row, writing a blog and
pressing his appeals. That he continues to live frustrates and angers families
of some of his victims. They want to watch him die.
Steward, 50, sees it differently. She has endorsed the November ballot measure
- Proposition 34 - to replace the death penalty with life without parole. She
said she is tired of dreading the call that will inform her of the day he's to
receive his lethal injection, and she's weary of seeing people who worked for
his execution die before him.
She has long opposed the death penalty but kept her views to herself during
Carter's murder trials. The wait for Carter's execution - and with no immediate
end in sight for the appeal process - has merely reinforced her sentiments. She
said she wants to move on.
But the wishes of Carter's other victims tug at her. During one of the murder
trials, George Cullins, father of 1 of the murder victims, asked Steward for a
favor. Cullins was approaching 70 and knew that Carter's appeals would drag on
for decades.
Would she take his place at Carter's execution if he could not be there?
Steward was stunned and did not know how to respond.
"I will try," she said.
::
After her assault, which took place in Ventura on March 29, 1984, Steward
started sleeping on her living room floor. She kept a loaded gun under her
pillow - even after Carter was arrested during a traffic stop a month later
with his victims' belongings in his car.
Prosecutors decided to try him 1st for her rape and then call her to testify
against him in the murder trials, scheduled for Los Angeles and San Diego.
During their 1st courtroom encounter months later in Ventura, Steward said she
managed to stare down Carter and felt stronger as a result. But she couldn't
put the attack behind her because she would have to testify about it at the
murder trials.
She met Carter when he was staying at a neighbor's house. He was tall,
handsome, quiet and "a little odd." Carter, then 28, tried to befriend her, but
she went out of her way to avoid him.
Late 1 night, 2 weeks after meeting him, she found him in her bedroom. He
sexually assaulted her throughout the night, his hand clutching her throat.
When she showed fear, he became more violent. So she feigned casualness,
telling him she had been attracted to him but had feared rejection.
When the sun came up, she told him she needed to go to work or her boss would
come looking for her. Her voice was hoarse and gravelly from the choking. After
walking him to the front door, she made him promise to call her.
Once alone, she ran to a neighbor, who summoned police. By the time they
arrived, Carter had vanished.
Heading to a Santa Monica courtroom for Carter's 1st murder trial in 1989,
Steward worried about how the victims' families would regard her.
She had come to view the slain women - Jillette Leonora Mills, 25, Susan Lynn
Knoll, 25, Bonnie Ann Guthrie, 34, Janette Anne Cullins, 24, and Tok Chum Kim,
42 - as "sisters" and saw herself as their voice.
Would their families resent her for living while their loved ones died? Could
she have prevented their murders by doing something differently? Did he kill
because he realized she had tricked him and decided to leave no more witnesses?
The loved ones of the other victims did not blame her. They were kind and warm.
She especially "bonded" with George and Helen Cullins, the parents of Janette.
The Cullinses attended the Santa Monica trial while awaiting their daughter's
case in San Diego.
Steward remembered the couple telling her during the trial that she looked like
their daughter. "Look honey," Helen said to George one day at court, touching
Steward's hand. "Her hair is even the same color."
Once on the stand, Steward captivated the courtroom. The prosecutor considered
her the state's best witness against Carter. Jennifer Bollman, a sister of
victim Jillette Mills, recalled that Steward was gutsy on the stand, describing
her assault in detail even as defense lawyers tried to make "it look like it
was her fault."
During the penalty phase, Bollman and other family members of the victims
testified they wanted Carter executed. Helen Cullins told a reporter that she
wanted to see him strangled, as her daughter was strangled.
When the jury recommended the death penalty, Steward said, the other victims'
vehemence muted her reaction. Though she opposed the death penalty, she was
happy for the families of the dead women. She did not feel it was her place to
express an opinion.
At Carter's 2nd murder trial in San Diego, George Cullins approached her with
his request.
::
Struggling to put the crimes behind her, Steward moved to Colorado. She noticed
that people seemed to recoil when they learned of her night with a serial
killer.
"I was associated with such horror, and it was on me in a way," she said. "I
felt people draw away."
She watched from afar as George Cullins became a victims' rights activist,
publicly deploring the sluggish pace of the justice system. Determined that
Carter's execution remain a priority, he regularly faxed a photograph of his
daughter to a deputy attorney general.
Steward shared his outrage when she discovered that Carter was writing a blog -
"Deadman Talking" - with the help of someone on the outside. In his writings,
Carter professed his innocence, though he never mentioned the crimes, focusing
more on life on death row and offering opinions on current events. Steward
called the man who was posting Carter's musings and complained.
For a while, she and the Cullinses exchanged notes. She said she grieved when
she read last year that George had died after a car accident. He was 88.
"George never got to see the end of this," said Steward, who is now a parent
and owner of a painting business.
When she read during the summer that Californians would be voting on a
proposition to replace the death penalty, she wrote a note of support to the
campaign, which enlisted her to join other crime victims at 2 news conferences.
Steward has no sympathy for Carter - she regards him as "a shell," a man
without a soul - and wants him placed in the general prison population "so he
can feel fear." In her mind, death row has given him celebrity status, a
podium, and she wants that taken away.
Still, she is worried that expressing her views might offend the families of
Carter's other victims, and it has.
Bollman, 55, describes Steward's position as a betrayal. Bollman is furious
that Carter, now 56, has been in prison longer than her sister, Jillette,
lived. She wants to attend Carter's execution, look him in the eye and say,
"Now you are getting yours."
Steward respects those feelings, but for her, a commutation to life without
possibility of parole would close the chapter. She knows she will never be able
to honor Cullins' request to attend Carter's execution.
"That would bring it all back," she said.
*****
Many death row inmates oppose bid to halt executions----If Proposition 34
passed, such prisoners would be given less legal assistance than they have now.
Many would rather gamble on being executed.
Police and death row inmates agree on one thing, a law enforcement group told
its members: They both oppose next week's ballot measure to replace the death
penalty with life without parole.
That statement, in a newsletter from the Los Angeles Police Protective League
opposing Proposition 34, highlighted what some California criminal defense
lawyers have been saying for months.
Many death row inmates who are years away from execution would rather gamble on
being executed than lose their state-paid lawyers, a preference that seems to
be confirmed by a limited, informal survey of some on California's death row.
"That is a significant sentiment, since the death penalty in California is
mostly life without parole anyway," said Don Specter, director of California's
Prison Law Office, who personally supports the initiative. "So the chances of
them getting executed are not that high, and if Prop. 34 passes, their cases
will be treated differently."
California has not executed an inmate in 6 years and has put to death only 13
offenders since 1978. If Proposition 34 passes, death row inmates will be
merged into the general prison population and have their sentences commuted to
life without parole.
"If you are thinking you are going to get your conviction overturned, you
certainly have a better chance if you are sentenced to death rather than life
because you are provided with more legal assistance," said Kent Scheidegger,
legal director of a law-and-order group fighting Proposition 34. "There is no
question about that."
If Proposition 34 passed, convicted murderers, like other felons, would still
be entitled to appeal their convictions in state court with government-paid
lawyers.
But except in rare circumstances, they would not be given lawyers to
investigate and file habeas corpus petitions, which raise evidence the trial
court did not hear and which can be heard in federal court once state appeals
are exhausted.
Proposition 34 has divided even some opponents of the death penalty.
The Chicago-based Campaign to End the Death Penalty decided not to endorse the
measure in part because the group opposes life without parole. The organization
said it sent 220 queries about the measure to San Quentin's death row and
received about 50 replies. No more than 4 inmates favored the measure, the
group said.
The death row survey was far from scientific, however, and the views of the
condemned might depend on how far their appeals have progressed. About 14
inmates have exhausted their appeals and could be executed fairly quickly once
executions resume in California, supporters of capital punishment say.
"Death row inmates have a variety of views," said Natasha Minsker, an American
Civil Liberties Union policy director who is running the campaign to pass
Proposition 34. "There are some who are very eager for it to pass, and some who
don't want it to pass."
David R. Dow, a University of Houston law professor who has been representing
capital defendants for 20 years, said he agreed with the Chicago group's
opposition to the ballot measure. Dow contended that a rarely enforced death
penalty law was preferable to "taking 700 people at once and saying they are
going to die of old age in prison."
California's condemned offenders already are more likely to die of old age,
other natural causes or suicide than by the executioner's needle. Court rulings
that have blocked executions are still pending.
Minsker said that no adult sentenced to life without parole has ever been
paroled, and that only those who have proved their innocence have been
released.
Unlike capital inmates, the lifers must either file their own habeas petitions,
persuade a judge to appoint a lawyer for them or find an advocate willing to
take on their case. Governors have the power to commute life sentences as well
as death sentences, though in some cases they must first obtain the approval of
the California Supreme Court.
Death row inmates with pending habeas petitions, numbering about 300, would
still have their petitions decided by courts if Proposition 34 passed, but
other condemned offenders would have to find new means of challenging their
cases beyond a 1st appeal.
Scheidegger, the lawyer with the conservative Criminal Justice Legal
Foundation, said he would not be surprised if death row lawyers felt stronger
about abolishing the death penalty than their clients.
"The lawyers tend to be obsessively focused on the death penalty, and the
inmates want them to focus more on the conviction," Scheidegger said.
Although death penalty verdicts are rarely overturned, "people do cling to
hopes of very unlikely events," Scheidegger said. "That is why we have the
lottery."
(source for both: Los Angeles Times)
**************************
To execute or not to execute?
Re "Debating Proposition 34," opinion, Oct. 28
Jimmy Carter has the chutzpah to write "The process for administering the death
penalty in the United States is broken beyond repair."
The biggest problem with California's capital punishment law from 1987 to the
present has been the judges appointed to the federal district courts and the
U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals by none other than Carter. Once again, we are
told the system is broken ??? by one of the key people who broke it.
Fortunately, the "beyond repair" part is wrong. The U.S. Supreme Court has
finally cracked down on the lower courts and limited their ability to wrongly
overturn valid capital judgments. We have 14 cases ready to go as soon as Gov.
Jerry Brown does his duty and adopts the modern method of lethal injection
already in use in other states.
Kent Scheidegger----Sacramento
The writer is the legal director at the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation.
****
James A. Ardaiz's cavalier attitude about the execution of an innocent person
is disturbing. Since 1973, 141 people have been exonerated from death rows
across the U.S. Perhaps this quote from former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day
O'Connor will give him pause: "If statistics are any indication, the system may
well be allowing some innocent defendants to be executed."
The National Research Council found in April that capital punishment has had no
demonstrable effect on murder rates over the last 30 years. And yet 46% of
murders in California go unsolved because of scarce resources. Proposition 34
addresses this.
Taxpayers have spent more than $4 billion since 1978 to execute 13 men but got
nothing in return. Let's take the money off death row and use it to help the
families of murder victims.
Gil Garcetti----Los Angeles
The writer was district attorney of Los Angeles County from 1992 to 2000.
****
That ending the death penalty would save money is utterly irrelevant to the
principle of crime and punishment.
There are more than 700 inmates on death row in California. Proposition 34
would convert their sentences to life in prison without parole. Douglas
Stankewitz has already spent more than three decades on death row, and he is
only 54. Is justice served by using scarce public resources to sustain
murderers for life?
Killing, unless for self-defense, is an act of inhumanity. Death fits the
crime. We need to revamp capital punishment in California, but leave its
principle alone.
Teresa C. Yu----Rancho Palos Verdes
****
The issue isn't whether the death penalty deters murder, it's whether it deters
murder better than life in prison without parole. It's hard to imagine a
potential murderer calculating that the death penalty is too much to risk but
life imprisonment is not.
Ardaiz wrote that we should "shore up weaknesses in the system." But it's
impossible to make the criminal justice system the one field of human endeavor
absolutely free of error.
If we believe that taking an innocent life is unacceptable, then we cannot risk
the virtual certainty that we will be guilty of that ourselves if we keep the
executioner's chamber open.
Robert Silberg----Los Angeles (source: Letters to the Editor, Los Angeles
Times)
**********************************
Prop. 34: Repeal the death penalty
Jewish tradition has always championed the idea that justice is a fundamental
necessity. When the Torah commands us, "Justice, justice shall you pursue," the
repetition is to teach that not only we must have just ends, our means to those
ends must be equally just.
Our commitment to that core Jewish teaching will be tested on Nov. 6 by our
community's response to Proposition 34, which would replace California's death
penalty with life in prison without parole, save $130 million each year, devote
$30 million per year for 3 years to help solve unsolved murders and rapes, and
require those convicted of murder to devote prison earnings to pay restitution
to the families of their victims.
During Yom Kippur, congregants at Kehillat Israel had the profound privilege of
hearing Franky Carrillo, a remarkable young man who was released from prison
after serving 20 years for a murder he didn't commit. The stark reality of how
unjust his fate could have been while we still have the death penalty couldn't
help but send shivers down the spines of the congregation.
Knowing that more than 140 innocent and wrongfully convicted people have been
released from prisons in recent years should alone be enough to convince us of
the necessity to protect the sanctity of justice and eliminate the death
penalty.
Religious leaders, civil-rights advocates, human-rights organizations and
others for years have been calling for an end to the death penalty, which has
been banned in most democratic nations. But now, death-penalty opponents have
been joined by a chorus of unlikely allies, including victims' rights
advocates, prison wardens and law-enforcement officials. Jeanne Woodford, who
oversaw executions as warden at San Quentin State Prison, now runs the state's
largest anti-death penalty organization. Former L.A. County District Attorney
Gil Garcetti is a leader on the Proposition 34 campaign. Even Don Heller, who
wrote the ballot initiative reinstating the death penalty in 1978, now says
doing so "was a terrible mistake."
These leaders cite the risk of executing the innocent, the fact that the death
penalty is used predominantly against the poor and people of color, and that
the high cost of the death penalty (including trials, special prison housing,
constitutionally required appeals, extra security and administrative costs) is
far more expensive than permanent incarceration. As proposed by Proposition 34,
the funds saved by eliminating the death penalty could instead go to law
enforcement, crime prevention and other public safety priorities.
Proposition 34 would convert death sentences into sentences of permanent
incarceration, effectively replacing death in the execution chamber with death
in prison. It enables the state to still mete out the punishment deserved to
the most heinous criminals but in a way that does not run the risk of killing
the innocent, wasting money, distorting our criminal-justice system and
needlessly bloodying our hands any further.
As responsible citizens, and as Jews responsive to the ethical insights that
have shaped our tradition, there are compelling reasons to support Proposition
34. Some may object, however, that the Bible endorses capital punishment.
Indeed, capital punishment is prescribed in a number of cases, including for
offenses ranging from murder to gathering sticks on Shabbat. But from the
earliest times, our rabbis understood that the ultimate judgment - who shall
live and who shall die - should not be left in the hands of flawed people
capable of error, bias or passion. And unlike other mistakes, no amount of
teshuvah can ever undo a wrongful execution.
Therefore, the rabbis enacted numerous obstacles to implementing the death
penalty, including the requirement that multiple eyewitnesses must have been
present at the time of a murder, warned the offender of the punishment of death
and heard him acknowledge the consequences before the murder was committed. So
opposed to the death penalty were the rabbis that the Talmud records the
following conversation: A Sanhedrin (High Court) that executes a person once in
seven years is a murderous one (hovlanit). Rabbi Eleazar ben Azariah said:
"Once in 70 years." Rabbis Tarfon and Akiva said: "If we were members of the
Sanhedrin, nobody would ever be put to death." (Mishnah: Makkot 1:10) Support
for the death penalty remained a minority and rejected opinion in Jewish life.
This is still the case today - every major Jewish denomination has come out in
favor of ending the death penalty or imposing a moratorium on state-run
executions.
The rabbis could not have envisioned the cruel and tragic system of state
execution that we have today. It is a patchwork system that struggles to find
attorneys competent to defend death cases. It costs more than $130 million more
per year than life in prison. And, as the Sacramento Bee pointed out in
reversing its 155-year-old editorial policy by endorsing Proposition 34, one's
chances of getting the death penalty arbitrarily vary according to what county
you live in. And yet even without such a system corrupted by such overwhelming
injustice, the rabbis had the wisdom to reject the death penalty. So, although
the death penalty remained in Jewish texts, it did not gain acceptance in
Jewish communities.
The instincts of those early Jewish leaders seem even wiser now. On Election
Day, we would be wise to follow their lead.
(source: Rabbi Steven Carr Reuben is senior rabbi at Kehillat Israel
Reconstructionist Congregation in Pacific Palisades. Steve Rohde is a
constitutional lawyer and vice chair of Bend the Arc: A Jewish Partnership for
Justice; Opinion----Jewish Journal)
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