Nov. 10
UTAH:
Utah lawmaker proposes death penalty for cop killers----The current law makes
the crime eligible for the death penalty, but the new measure would make it the
mandatory sentence
Rep. Paul Ray is drafting legislation that makes the death penalty a mandatory
sentence for any person convicted of targeting and killing a police officer.
According to the Deseret News Utah, Ray said that harsher consequences need to
be put in place to prevent ambushes on officers that have become all too
common.
The current law counts murder of a law enforcement officer as an aggravated
crime, allowing prosecutors and jurors the choice to ask or sentence the
suspect to the death penalty.
The proposed bill eliminates the district attorney's choice of pursuing capital
punishment, and makes the death penalty a mandatory sentence, the publication
reported.
After news broke of the ambush of 2 Des Moines officers sitting in their patrol
cars, Ray told the publication he became "furious" and even more committed to
make the bill a law.
"These are guys who knowingly, every day, go to a job they know they may not
return from," Ray said. "And then you've got cowards that are going out and
targeting these guys, trying to make sure they don't go home to their
families."
Rather than focusing on officers who are attacked or killed during process of
investigating other crimes, the bill focuses on targeted attacks that single
out officers, the publication reported. Defining exactly what constitutes
targeting is still in progress.
(source: policeone.com)
CALIFORNIA:
Prop 62: Challenge already filed to measure that would speed executions
Although California voters soundly rejected abolishing the death penalty and
appear to have approved a measure to speed up executions, don't expect anything
to change soon - if at all.
Proposition 66, which was ahead Wednesday by a razor-thin margin with dozens of
counties still counting ballots, would face major hurdles before it could
deliver on its promise of expediting a death penalty appeals process that often
drags on for decades. About 750 people are on death row in California, and no
one has been executed since 2006.
Among the obstacles: Proponents of Proposition 62, which would have abolished
capital punishment in California but was defeated more soundly than a similar
measure in 2012, said they plan to file suit over the measure to speed appeals.
Even with more votes left to be counted, they conceded at 9:30 a.m. Wednesday
that they had lost their effort to defeat Proposition 66. And Orrick, a leading
California-based law firm, filed a legal challenge late Wednesday seeking an
immediate stay from the California Supreme Court.
"Proposition 66 will absolutely end up in protracted and costly litigation,"
said Ana Zamora, manager of the No on 66 campaign. "It's just more empty
promises to California voters and victims' families."
But Yes on 66 supporters vowed to carry out the measure's highly technical
provisions, such as putting trial courts in charge of initial petitions
challenging death penalty convictions, establishing a time frame for death
penalty reviews, and requiring appointed attorneys to accept death penalty
appeals.
"If it is obstructed, we're going to do everything we can to get it
implemented," said Sacramento District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert, co-chair
of the Yes on 66 campaign.
The measure does not include any funding for the extra attorneys and trial
judges that would be required to speed up appeals. Lawmakers would have to
allocate more money to already underfunded trial courts.
The state Legislature is dominated by the Democratic Party, which opposed
Proposition 66.
"The Legislature and the governor should respect the will of the voters," said
Schubert, when asked about the funding.
California voters approached the 2 dueling death penalty initiatives in a
different spirit than the other criminal justice measure on the ballot,
Proposition 57.
Aimed at reducing prison overcrowding, that measure passed with overwhelming
support. Backed by Gov. Jerry Brown, it will expand parole opportunities for
certain inmates and require that judges decide whether juveniles should be
tried in adult court and sent to prison.
Proposition 57 is the third criminal justice reform approved by Californians
since 2012. The other 2 are Proposition 36, which eased the state's tough
3-strikes law for repeat offenders, and Proposition 47, which reduced some
crimes to misdemeanors, shortening sentences and sending offenders to jail
rather than prison.
"We're seeing a real split," said Garrick Percival, an associate professor of
political science at San Jose State. "Californians are saying our prison system
is broken and costs too much, but for the worst of the worst, they still
advocate the ultimate punishment."
Proposition 66's victory surprised some opponents, partly because polls had
shown both death penalty measures trailing.
However, the ACLU, NAACP and other groups have said they are prepared to duke
it out in court. Experts said they may be able to challenge the measure on the
grounds that conscripting lawyers in death penalty cases and threatening to
take their livelihood away (by not appointing them in other matters) if they
refuse would be illegal.
Another line of attack could be on the grounds that requiring defendants and
their lawyers to challenge their convictions in trial court would require an
amendment of the state constitution. To put such an amendment on the ballot,
supporters would have had to collect more signatures than they did for
Proposition 66.
(source: Mercury News)
***************************************
California has upheld the death penalty. Now what?
California has once again reaffirmed its commitment to the death penalty.
On Tuesday, voters defeated Proposition 62, a measure to abolish capital
punishment. It garnered only 46 % of the vote, the second time in four years
that the state has rejected an effort by critics to repeal the death penalty.
Proposition 66, which aims to speed up a fractured system that has produced
only 13 executions in nearly 4 decades, was narrowly ahead as vote-counting
continued, with about 51 % support.
Regardless of whether it passes, the state will continue to try capital cases.
"The people of California believe that death is the appropriate punishment for
the very worst murderers," said Kent Scheidegger, legal director for the
Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, who helped write Proposition 66. "For those
who are opposed to it, it's time to get over it and make the system work."
Jacob Hay, spokesman for the Proposition 62 campaign, said his side still
believes an end to the death penalty will eventually come in California.
"Nothing's actually different today. It's still ineffective justice, it's still
costly, it's still a risk of putting an innocent person to death," Hay said.
"In time, more and more people will see that."
Though death sentences have fallen to record lows here in recent years, as they
have nationwide, they are still more common than in most other states because
of a handful of counties in Southern California where prosecutors push for
capital punishment at higher rates. In 2015, for example, Riverside and Los
Angeles counties each sent more people to death row than the entire state of
Texas.
District attorneys widely supported Proposition 66, encouraging voters to
maintain the death penalty for the worst of the worst murderers. But Anne Marie
Schubert, the district attorney for Sacramento County, said she did not expect
the affirmation by Californians would encourage prosecutors to seek death
sentences more frequently again.
"Our decisions should always be driven by the facts and circumstances of the
case," Schubert said.
Opponents of the death penalty had hoped that Proposition 62 would send a
strong national statement about the future of capital punishment, which has
been in decline across the country. Instead, California was part of a mini-wave
of states on Tuesday that halted that trend: Oklahoma voted to add the death
penalty to its state constitution, while Nebraska reversed its Legislature's
decision last year to repeal it.
Ana Zamora, campaign manager for No on Prop. 66, said opponents would continue
to challenge aspects of the law where ambiguities remain, like the safety of
the lethal injection protocol: "We will explore every avenue to make sure every
legal problem is raised."
"The people of California believe that death is the appropriate punishment for
the very worst murderers."----Kent Scheidegger, legal director for the Criminal
Justice Legal Foundation
If Proposition 66 were to pass, voters could expect delays to its
implementation. Opponents, who slammed many of its provisions as unworkable,
vowed to challenge it in court.
The biggest changes it would make involve the appeals process for death
sentences. Condemned inmates can wait more than a decade for a lawyer, who may
then spend years filing petitions for the court to consider new evidence or
mitigating factors.
In an effort to speed up legal challenges, the initiative mandates they be
completed within 5 years. That includes both direct appeals, which focus on the
proceedings of the trial, and habeas corpus petitions, regarding material that
was not part of the original trial.
Attorneys would have to file any habeas corpus petition within 1 year of being
appointed to represent an inmate and could not file additional petitions,
except for innocence claims. Those petitions would be considered by the same
trial judge, who proponents argue could handle them more efficiently because he
or she is already familiar with the case, rather than by the California Supreme
Court, which would still receive direct appeals.
Proponents are hopeful the overhaul would allow the state to proceed from death
sentences to executions in under a decade.
"The changes in this initiative are not creating a system from scratch,"
Scheidegger said. "It is making repairs."
But for its requirements to be carried out in a timely manner, the state would
need hundreds more lawyers to take up ongoing cases for inmates awaiting legal
representation. Defense attorneys have called this unfeasible, even though
Proposition 66 requires California to expand the pool of qualified counsel to
include lawyers who are eligible for appointment to the most serious non-death
penalty appeals.
Michael J. Hersek, director of the Habeas Corpus Resource Center, one of the
state agencies that represents death row inmates, said he had no idea where his
office would get the money to hire more attorneys. Legal fees for habeas corpus
petitions run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
"This is a mystery to me. There's no funding attached to it," he said. "Good
luck getting those cases done without more lawyers."
(source: Sacramento Bee)
********************************
Despite Donations From Billionaires, Calif. Measure To Repeal Death Penalty
Fails
California's ballot measures on criminal justice reform were flush with cash
from the state's billionaires. Their millions helped pass a measure to reduce
prison overcrowding, but failed to push through an initiative to repeal the
death penalty. Groups both supporting and opposing a measure that will speed up
executions for prisoners on death row received funding from billionaires.
Billionaires Reed Hastings, Dustin Moskovitz, Nicholas Pritzker II, George
Soros, Tom Steyer and Mark Zuckerberg helped bankroll Proposition 57, which
passed yesterday with nearly 2/3 of the vote. The measure will improve parole
options for nonviolent felons and let judges to decide whether to try juveniles
as adults.
The most generous backer was Steyer, a former hedge fund executive that FORBES
estimates is worth $1.6 billion, who has been one of the biggest spenders
nationally in recent elections. He contributed $2 million to committees
supporting the measure individually and through his group NextGen California.
Other donors included Hastings, CEO of Netflix, and Zuckerberg, Facebook's CEO,
both of whom contributed around $1 million, and Facebook cofounder Moskowitz
and hedge fund billionaire Soros, who both put in $500,000 through their
political action groups.
The measure's financial backers also included Liz Simons, daughter of retired
hedge fund billionaire James Simons, and her daughter Caitlin Heising; an
advocacy group funded by former billionaire and Duty Free Shoppers founder
Chuck Feeney; actor Robert Downey Jr. and his wife, Susan Downey;
singer-songwriter John Legend; and Kaitlyn Trigger Krieger, wife of Instagram
cofounder Mike Krieger.
(source: forbes.com)
************************
State's death penalty repeal effort fails again
4 years after Californians defeated an effort to repeal the death penalty,
voters rejected a do-over and were favoring a counter measure that would speed
up appeals so condemned murders are actually executed.
With more than 8 million votes counted Wednesday, 54 percent of voters rejected
Proposition 62 that would have replaced the death penalty with life in prison
without the chance of parole. The dueling reform measure had a narrow lead of
about 51 %.
"California voters have spoken loud and clear that they want to keep the death
penalty intact," said Sacramento County District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert,
who championed the reform measure. "This is the 9th time California voters have
voted in favor of keeping the death penalty for the most heinous killers."
Supporters for both ballot initiatives agreed the current system is broken.
More than 900 convicted killers have been sent to death row since 1978, but
only 13 have been executed in the state. The last execution by lethal injection
was more than a decade ago.
The repeal camp conceded defeat Wednesday morning, but remained steadfast in
their belief that capital punishment would eventually be killed.
"The outcome of the election does not change the fact that California???s death
penalty is broken beyond repair and remains a sentence 'in name only,'" said
Matt Cherry, campaign manager for Prop. 62. "The high costs will continue to
add up, the backlog of cases will continue to mount and the stories of
injustice will continue to be heard. We are confident California's failed death
penalty will one day come to an end, either from voters or through the courts."
The measures come at a turning point for executions nationally. Capital
punishment has been either legislatively or judicially repealed in 8 states
since 2000 and has mostly been in a steady decline since.
Voters in 1 of those states, Nebraska, reinstated the death penalty Tuesday - a
year after lawmakers repealed it.
California prosecutors and police launched the reform effort after voters
defeated the 2012 repeal attempt 52 % to 48 %. Proposition 66 was aimed at
speeding up tedious appeals that can take more than 25 years.
Supporters urged voters to "mend don't end" capital punishment so the most evil
killers get the punishment determined by jurors and approved by a judge. They
said executions would deliver justice to family members of their victims.
Law enforcement groups supported the pro-death penalty side, along with kin of
victims. Family and friends of Laci Peterson, who was 8 months pregnant when
she disappeared from her Modesto home on Christmas Eve 2002, recently held a
news conference to support the measure and oppose the repeal attempt. Her
husband, Scott Peterson, has been on death row for 11 years.
Opponents of the death penalty pressed a multi-pronged campaign. They argued
that the death penalty is expensive because of the lengthy repeals and
eliminating it would save $150 million a year. They also held news conferences
with former death row convicts who had their convictions overturned to
emphasize the risk of executing an innocent person.
Capital punishment opponents include legal, civil liberties and religious
groups along with former President Jimmy Carter and big money donors such as
Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, hedge fund billionaire Tom Steyer and Stanford
computer sciences professor Nicholas McKeown.
Each measure needed a majority of votes to pass. If Prop. 66 does not hang on
to its narrow lead, the current system remains in place.
(source: Orange County Register)
**********************
California Votes To Speed Up Death Penalty, Rather Than Abolish It----Appeals
in death penalty cases currently last an average of 2 decades.
A referendum in California to speed up the appeals process for the state's
death row inmates has narrowly passed, while a separate measure to abolish the
state's death penalty has failed.
The Associated Press called both races Wednesday morning.
Proposition 66, which speeds up the appeals process, won with 50.9 % of the
vote. The competing Proposition 62, which would have abolished California's
death penalty, drew 46.1 %.
The state had previously attempted to address its sprawling, costly system in
2012 when it narrowly missed abolishing the death penalty.
California's 750 death row prisoners represent a quarter of the nation's death
penalty population. The state has only executed 13 prisoners since it resumed
executions in 1978, and none have been carried out since 2006. More prisoners
sentenced to death have died from illness, suicide or other causes than from
executions, according to state data. But the state has continued to sentence
people to death nevertheless.
Last year, California ran out of room on death row, which prompted Gov. Jerry
Brown (D) to ask lawmakers for $3.2 million to open additional cells in San
Quentin, which houses the state???s death row and execution chamber.
The costs of California's death penalty system have climbed with the growing
death row population. Since the 1970s, maintaining the death penalty has cost
the state an estimated $4 billion, or roughly $308 million per execution.
Californians on both sides of the death penalty debate agree the system needs
to change.
Supporters of the abolition effort have argued the system is too broken to fix
and too costly to keep. Eliminating the death penalty would not only save an
estimated $150 million a year, they say, but would ensure the state does not
execute any innocent peopl.
Supporters of the successful Proposition 66, meanwhile, say California should
"mend, not end," the death penalty.
Prop 66 expands which courts and attorneys can hear appeals in death penalty
cases, thus expediting the process. Trial courts, rather than appeals courts,
will hear initial challenges to death penalty convictions, and lawyers will be
required to defend capital cases to which they were assigned. Previously,
lawyers who represented death penalty clients during the appeals process had to
have relevant experience.
Prop 62 supporters said the competing measure was poorly written and failed to
address systemic problems like racial bias or the challenges of carrying out
executions constitutionally.
Under Prop 62, inmates would have been required to work, with between 20 % and
60 % of their earnings garnished to pay restitution to their victims' families.
While the measure enjoyed broad support from a coalition of current and former
officials (many of them Democrats), human rights groups and notables like
former President Jimmy Carter, one surprising group opposed the measure - death
row inmates themselves.
Without the death penalty, prisoners are likely to lose resources to appeal
and, in some cases, investigate their convictions, thus reducing their chances
of having a conviction overturned or a sentence reduced.
"I led the campaign to bring the death penalty back to California in 1978. It
was a costly mistake," said Ron Briggs, who spearheaded the effort to create
California's death penalty system, in a statement supporting Prop 62. "Now I
know we just hurt the victims' families we were trying to help and wasted
taxpayer dollars. The death penalty cannot be fixed. We need to replace it,
lock up murderers for good, make them work, and move on."
(source: Kim Bellware, Huffington Post)
USA:
ACLU calls for guilty plea, life sentence for Dylann Roof after news of
competency hearing
The deputy director of the American Civil Liberties Union called on Wednesday
for the government to allow Dylann Roof to plead guilty and take a life
sentence after the courts released details of Roof's competency hearing.
"With the interruption of the proceedings in Dylann Roof's trial for a
determination of his mental competency, the Department of Justice should accept
his guilty plea and allow him to be sentenced to life without parole. If the
Department continues its pursuit of the death penalty, we will not see an end
to Roof's case, not for months or even years," said Jeffrey Robinson.
"The Department of Justice should let the guilty plead guilty and send Dylann
Roof to prison for life - no appeals, no attention, just a long time to
contemplate the horror that he caused."
Jury selection was supposed to begin Monday but a last-minute filing by Roof
led to a delay while Roof and his attorneys met with U.S. District Court Judge
Richard Gergel.
After a closed door hearing, the court said jury selection would begin again on
Wednesday -- and then a followup statement revealing Roof was undergoing a
mental competency hearing pushed back jury selection for 2 weeks.
The court is supposed to receive an update to the competency on Nov. 16 and
render a decision on proceeding with the case on Nov. 18.
"The families of the victims and the rest of the community will remain in limbo
for all of that time, keeping Roof and his deeds front and center on our
screens and in our minds without closure. For what? For the notion that killing
him will somehow show that we as a community are less racist and more just,"
Robinson said.
Roof faces the death penalty in both state and federal court. He's facing some
three dozen hate crimes charges in federal court and 9 murder charges in state
court.
(source: KLEW TV news)
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