California

Former San Quentin Warden Woodford says death penalty almost dead

To hear former San Quentin State Prison Warden Jeanne Woodford tell it, the death penalty is all but dead in California.

“The political consensus is that California’s death penalty is on its way out,” she told an audience of about 70 people Saturday in the auditorium at the Redwoods in Mill Valley. “The question remains when and how it will go.”

The 61-year-old Woodford, who oversaw four executions during her five-year stint as warden of San Quentin, was a prominent leader in last year’s narrowly defeated Proposition 34 campaign to replace the death penalty with life in prison without possibility of parole.

On the eve of the election, a Field Poll showed the Prop. 34 initiative in the lead. It ended up losing 48 percent to 52 percent, a margin of just 500,000 votes.

She pointed out that public opinion has changed drastically since the death penalty was reinstated in 1978, when 70 percent of California voters favored it. Since then, it has cost the state $4 billion to administer.

“If 250,001 voters had changed their minds and voted yes, we would have won and no longer have the death penalty in this state,” she said, adding, “We did succeed in forever changing the landscape on this issue in this state. With 48 percent of voters supporting repeal, we have shown that the state is now evenly divided on the death penalty. We have fundamentally changed the conversation.”

In opposing the death penalty, Woodford, who rose through the ranks to become the director of the entire California prison system, says she knows from first hand experience that it wastes money, does not make law-abiding citizens any safer and risks executing death row inmates who may have been wrongfully convicted and are innocent. (Marin Independent Journal)

The Horrible Psychology of Solitary Confinement

At left, a photograph of Ronnie Dewberry, a prisoner in solitary confinement at California’s Pelican Bay State Prison. The photo was received by his sister Marie Levin in 2012, after a rule change allowed prisoners in solitary to be photographed for the first time in more than 20 years. At right is Dewberry’s next-most-recent photo, taken in 1988.

In the largest prison protest in California’s history, nearly 30,000 inmates have gone on hunger strike. Their main grievance: the state’s use of solitary confinement, in which prisoners are held for years or decades with almost no social contact and the barest of sensory stimuli.

The human brain is ill-adapted to such conditions, and activists and some psychologists equate it to torture. Solitary confinement isn’t merely uncomfortable, they say, but such an anathema to human needs that it often drives prisoners mad.

In isolation, people become anxious and angry, prone to hallucinations and wild mood swings, and unable to control their impulses. The problems are even worse in people predisposed to mental illness, and can wreak long-lasting changes in prisoners’ minds.

“What we’ve found is that a series of symptoms occur almost universally. They are so common that it’s something of a syndrome,” said psychiatrist Terry Kupers of the Wright Institute, a prominent critic of solitary confinement. “I’m afraid we’re talking about permanent damage.”

California holds some 4,500 inmates in solitary confinement, making it emblematic of the United States as a whole: More than 80,000 U.S. prisoners are housed this way, more than in any other democratic nation.

Even as those numbers have swelled, so have the ranks of critics. A series of scathing reports and documentaries — from the National Religious Campaign Against Torture, the New York Civil Liberties Union, the American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights Watch, and Amnesty International — were released in 2012, and the U.S. Senate held its first-ever hearings on solitary confinement. In May of this year, the U.S. Government Accountability Office criticized the federal Bureau of Prisons for failing to consider what long-term solitary confinement did to prisoners.

What’s emerged from the reports and testimonies reads like a mix of medieval cruelty and sci-fi dystopia. For 23 hours or more per day, in what’s euphemistically called “administrative segregation” or “special housing,” prisoners are kept in bathroom-sized cells, under fluorescent lights that never shut off. Video surveillance is constant. Social contact is restricted to rare glimpses of other prisoners, encounters with guards, and brief video conferences with friends or family.

‘Most of these people will return to our communities.’

For stimulation, prisoners might have a few books; often they don’t have television, or even a radio. In 2011, another hunger strike among California’s prisoners secured such amenities as wool hats in cold weather and wall calendars. The enforced solitude can last for years, even decades.

These horrors are best understood by listening to people who’ve endured them. As one Florida teenager described in a report onsolitary confinement in juvenile prisoners, “The only thing left to do is go crazy.” To some ears, though, stories will always be anecdotes, potentially misleading, possibly powerful, but not necessarily representative. That’s where science enters the picture.

“What we often hear from corrections officials is that inmates are feigning mental illness,” said Heather Rice, a prison policy expert at the National Religious Campaign Against Torture. “To actually hear the hard science is very powerful.”

Scientific studies of solitary confinement and its damages have actually come in waves, first emerging in the mid-19th century, when the practice fell from widespread favor in the United States and Europe. More study came in the 1950s, as a response to reports of prisoner isolation and brainwashing during the Korean War. The renewed popularity of solitary confinement in the United States, which dates to the prison overcrowding and rehabilitation program cuts of the 1980s, spurred the most recent research.

Consistent patterns emerge, centering around the aforementioned extreme anxiety, anger, hallucinations, mood swings and flatness, and loss of impulse control. In the absence of stimuli, prisoners may also become hypersensitive to any stimuli at all. Often they obsess uncontrollably, as if their minds didn’t belong to them, over tiny details or personal grievances. Panic attacks are routine, as is depression and loss of memory and cognitive function.

According to Kupers, who is serving as an expert witness in an ongoing lawsuit over California’s solitary confinement practices, prisoners in isolation account for just 5 percent of the total prison population, but nearly half of its suicides.

When prisoners leave solitary confinement and re-enter society — something that often happens with no transition period — their symptoms might abate, but they’re unable to adjust. “I’ve called this the decimation of life skills,” said Kupers. “It destroys one’s capacity to relate socially, to work, to play, to hold a job or enjoy life.”

Some disagreement does exist over the extent to which solitary confinement drives people mad who are not already predisposed to mental illness, said psychiatrist Jeffrey Metzner, who helped design what became a controversial study of solitary confinement in Colorado prisons.

In that study, led by the Colorado Department of Corrections, researchers reported that the mental conditions of many prisoners in solitary didn’t deteriorate. The methodology has been criticized as unreliable, confounded by prisoners hiding their feelings or happy just to be talking with anyone, even a researcher.

Metzner denies that charge, but says that even if healthy prisoners in solitary confinement make it through an unarguably grueling psychological ordeal, many — perhaps half of all prisoners — begin with mental disorders. “That’s bad in itself, because with adequate treatment, they could have gotten better,” Metzner said.

Explaining why isolation is so damaging is complicated, but can be distilled to basic human needs for social interaction and sensory stimulation, along with a lack of the social reinforcement that prevents everyday concerns from snowballing into pychoses, said Kupers.

Former Pelican Bay inmate Lonnie Rose, who was held in solitary confinement for 9.5 years, holds photos taken of himself in 1999 and March of this year. Image: Adithya Sambamurthy/The Center for Investigative Reporting

He likened the symptoms seen in solitary prisoners to those seen in soldiers suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. The conditions are similar, and it’s known from studies of soldiers that chronic, severe stress alters pathways in the brain.

Brain imaging studies of prisoners are lacking, though, given the logistical difficulties of conducting them in high-security conditions.

Such studies are arguably not needed, as the symptoms of solitary confinement are so well-described, but could add a degree of neurobiological specificity to the discussion.

“What you get from a brain scan is the ability to point to something” concrete, said law professor Amanda Pustilnik of the University of Maryland, who specializes in the intersection of neuroscience and the legal system. “The credibility of psychology in the public mind is very low, whereas the credibility of our newest set of brain tools is very high.”

Brain imaging might also convey the damages of solitary confinement in a more compelling way. “There are few people who say that mental distress is impermissible in punishment. But we do think harming people physically is impermissible,” Pustilnik said.

“You can’t starve people. You can’t put them into a hotbox or maim them,” she continued. “If you could do brain scans to show that people suffer permanent damage, that could make solitary look less like some form of distress, and more like the infliction of a permanent disfigurement.”

Such arguments might still not be shared by people who believe criminals deserve their punishments, but there’s also a utilitarian argument. Solitary confinement is supposed to reduce prison violence, but some studies suggest that reducing its use — as in one Mississippi prison, where mentally ill prisoners were removed from solitary and given treatment — actually reduces prison-wide violence.

The demands of hunger-striking California prisoners include a five-year limit on solitary sentences, an end to indefinite sentences, and a formal chance to earn their way back to general-population housing through good behavior.

“Most of these people will return to our communities,” said Rice. “When we punish them in such a manner that they’re coming out more damaged than they went in, and are ill-equipped to re-enter communities and be productive citizens, we’re doing a disservice to society as a whole.”

 

California death penalty: State abandons defense of three-drug executions

California has abandoned the legal defense of its delay-ridden lethal injection procedures, moving ahead to adopt a single-drug option that has been embraced by other states trying to enforce their death penalty laws.

The Brown administration has decided against appealing a May ruling that invalidated the state’s three-drug execution method, which has been mired in years of state and federal court legal tangles.

Faced with a Wednesday deadline, the state chose not to seek a California Supreme Court review of the decision striking down the three-drug procedure because state officials failed to follow administrative rules when adopting them several years ago.

A prison system spokeswoman said the governor and other state officials will proceed with working out a method of executing condemned inmates with a single fatal dose of a sedative, which other states — such as Ohio, Arizona and Washington — have adopted to short-circuit legal challenges to their lethal injection procedures. (Mercury News)

USA: California urged to reform ‘inhumane’ prison units ahead of hunger strike

A planned hunger strike by prisoners in California’s solitary confinement units highlights the urgent need for major reform, Amnesty International said today.

Over a thousand prisoners continue to be held in indefinite isolation, confined for 22-24 hours per day in small, often windowless cells, and deprived of meaningful human contact.  Hundreds have been held in these ‘Security Housing Units’ for more than ten years.

The hunger strike is due to start on Monday 8 July, in protest against the failure of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to carry out reforms pledged a year ago.

“They said they’d give prisoners a way out of isolation, but few prisoners have been moved out of the units, and most cases haven’t even been reviewed yet,” said Angela Wright, Amnesty International’s expert on US ‘supermax’ prisons.

“Rather than improving, conditions have actually significantly deteriorated.”

Cell-checks by guards every 30 minutes, including throughout the night, have now been introduced.

“These prisoners are already being held in dire and inhumane conditions, and these new night-time checks appear punitive, and may result in severe sleep deprivation.  They should be stopped immediately,” said Angela Wright.

According to the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, solitary confinement, even for a limited period, can cause serious psychological harm. States should isolate prisoners only in exceptional circumstances, and for as short a time as possible.

The California State authorities’ own figures show that in 2011 more than 500 prisoners had spent more than ten years in the isolation units at Pelican Bay State Prison and 78 had been there for 20 years or more.

Amnesty International visited California’s isolation units in November 2011 and issued a highly critical report, USA: The Edge of Endurance, the following year.

In November 2012, California’s Corrections department introduced changes to the criteria for assigning inmates to the units and a ‘step-down program’ to allow prisoners to earn their way out of isolation. However, even once prisoners are cleared to start the program, they would continue to be held in physical and social isolation for at least the first two years.

Most of those held in the isolation units have not yet even been admitted into the ‘step down program’.

A July 2011 hunger strike by prisoners in California’s Pelican Bay isolation unit lasted for 20 days. The strike spread to prisons across the state, with more than 6,000 prisoners participating at its peak.

The horrifying existence of solitary confinement by James Simmons

Imagine being locked in a cage alone for 22 ½ hours a day, sometimes for decades on end, with no normal human contact ever and no exposure to direct sunlight ever. Now imagine that during this terrible experience you were subjected to being shot with an assault rifle and dumped in a cell covered with fecal matter until you had an aneurysm – or held down in a scalding hot bath until you received third degree burns all over your body. This isn’t Guantanamo Bay or Abu Ghraib … it’s California.

 

Todd Ashker's cell PBSP SHU-1 outside front 0707, web

Todd Ashker, one of the four “main reps,” leaders of the campaign to end solitary confinement in California through peaceful protest – the 2011 hunger strikes and another set to begin July 8 unless the prisoners’ Five Core Demands are met as promised – lived in this cell from the time Pelican Bay State Prison opened until last year, when, as punishment, he was moved away from the other main reps. They have persevered, however, and prisoners across California and the U.S. are making plans for peaceful protests.

The state of California calls them Security Housing Units (SHUs), and over 3,000 prisoners are warehoused in facilities like this1 (up to 80,000 in the U.S. total2). The majority of these prisons have no windows, computers or telephone calls. Showers are typically once a week, mail is withheld regularly, meals are pushed through a slot in the front of their cell, and there is no work or rehabilitation of any kind provided.

A major reason this type of inhumane treatment continues to exist is the common misconception that the average citizen has about who is being housed in these facilities. This is most likely because of the government’s propaganda campaign that consists of claims that these solitary confinement units are only for the “worst of the worst.”

 

The truth of the matter is that there are many prisoners with no record of violence in the outside world in these facilities and that these same solitary confinement techniques are being used on adolescents in juvenile facilities as well. Pelican Bay State Prison’s Security Housing Unit in Crescent City, California, is widely considered by prisoners as the worst facility for solitary confinement in the state, and experts have called it the worst prison in the United States.

 

Over a thousand prisoners are warehoused in the SHU at Pelican Bay State Prison (PBSP) and are never given access to direct sunlight, let alone the right to go outside. The rare occasions that they get visitors – as the prison’s location is extremely isolated as well – it is limited to an hour and a half and there is a glass screen separating them.

 

In fact, prisoners are not only separated from the outside world but within the prison itself, as barriers are put in place for medical visits and to protect all other correctional staff. This kind of isolation that consists of always being inside under artificial light and being alone in a small cage 22 ½ hours a day – for multiple decades in some cases – has severe psychological implications.

 

Stuart Grassian, a Harvard psychiatrist specializing in solitary confinement, found that the effects of this type of confinement included trouble with thinking, perception, impulse control, memory, hallucinations and stimuli.3 It was considered after only a couple of weeks of solitary confinement to be “psychological torture.” The culmination of this treatment of prisoners and their conditions at Pelican Bay State Prison led to Amnesty International concluding that the facility was in violation of international law.4

 

If the intention of the prison system is rehabilitation so when prisoners are released they do not return, then we surely must object to solitary confinement.

 

This extremist version of solitary confinement employed by PBSP will therefore inevitably effect our greater society within the United States, as these inmates develop a gamut of mental illnesses that go untreated before being released back into the general population of the outside world. The “supposed” purpose of the prison system in this nation is to rehabilitate, but these SHU facilities do nothing of the sort and instead just inflict severe psychological damage on prisoners who will most likely be released at some point.

 

Prison officials at PBSP claim that the SHU facility is intended to keep their other prisons safer from gang violence, yet this kind of violence is still on the rise in California’s prison system, and the SHU is also filled with political prisoners with no gang affiliation who are only guilty of organizing within their respective prisons. This has led to the Center for Constitutional Rights filing a lawsuit against the entire California prison system for their use of long term solitary confinement, claiming it is a form of torture and therefore illegal. To put this all in perspective, solitary confinement was utilized in the 19th century as a form of self-reproach but was abandoned after concerns about the psychological effects of such treatment.5

 

Vaughn Dortch was convicted of petty thievery, got into fights in prison, and was then sent to Pelican Bay State Prison SHU unit. Upon several months of extreme solitary confinement, he began to deteriorate psychologically and covered himself in feces. He was then forced to take a bath in scalding hot water and held down against his will by guards until receiving third degree burns all over his body. Medics refused to give him any pain medication for thirty minutes and the head doctor even went as far as saying that he was not burned. Only one individual was found culpable and fired, while no mechanisms were put in place to prevent an incident like this from occurring again.6

 

Todd Ashker's cell PBSP SHU-2 inside back bunk area 0707, web

This is the inside of the cell where Todd Ashker lived for 25 years. The bunk, which he used as a desk in the daytime, stretches across the back wall. His rolled-up mattress became his chair.

Todd Ashker was convicted of burglary and sentenced to six years in prison. Upon entering the prison system, he got into an altercation with another prisoner over a debt and murdered him. According to Ashker, it was self-defense.

When an individual commits murder in prison when serving only a six year sentence, it can be argued that the defensive nature one must maintain within this type of system might be at least partially culpable. An anonymous informant told prison officials that Todd Ashker’s murder was connected to the Aryan Brotherhood and as a result of this he was also sent to Pelican Bay State Prison SHU unit, where those who commit violent acts in prison or have gang affiliations are sent.

 

While serving time there, Ashker got into another altercation; there are two versions of what happened, the state’s version and Ashker’s. According to Ashker, prison guards set him up for a “gladiator style” fight and when things escalated out of control, he was shot with an assault rifle by a guard in the wrist. His wound nearly severed his hand from his arm and he was immediately dumped into a urine and feces covered cell without medical treatment. Lack of sufficient medical treatment then and afterward resulted in Ashker getting an aneurysm in his wound.

 

The state of California’s official story was that they broke up a fight between Ashker and another inmate and that he was warned multiple times before being shot. The Department of Corrections also denies dumping him in a filthy cell and that lack of decent medical treatment resulted in his aneurysm. A couple of questions come to mind when evaluating the state’s official story.

 

How was Ashker allowed so close to another inmate, when he is supposedly in severe solitary confinement with little to no contact with anyone but prison officials? If the state’s story is so accurate, then why was Ashker awarded $225,000 in a lawsuit against the Department of Corrections in a state notoriously tough on criminals? “In this tough-on-crime attitude here in California, it’s always the case that jurors don’t want to give a criminal one red cent, so there must have been something that went on there at Pelican Bay,” said San Francisco attorney Herman Franck.7 These are the kinds of horrendous altercations that occur at Pelican Bay State Prison on top of the psychological torture endured by inmates for years and sometimes decades on end.

 

 If we believe in basic human rights and dignity for all human beings, then we surely must object to solitary confinement.

 

The only way to get out of the SHU at Pelican Bay State Prison is to “debrief” – or tell prison officials everything you know about the prison gang you have been “validated” to belong to. The only problem is that “debriefing” results in the prisoner putting himself in tremendous danger of being killed once he is back in the general prison population. Because of this California leads the nation in long-term solitary confinement.

 

Another problematic aspect of these procedures is the process of “validating” gang members. The gang “validation” process has been criticized because it can occur without evidence of any specific illegal activity and heavily rely on anonymous informants, which is circumstantial and almost impossible to repudiate. In Ashker’s case, he has denied ties to the Aryan Brotherhood and has never been convicted of committing an illegal gang-related crime. If he is telling the truth, then how on earth is he supposed to “debrief” – even if he wanted to?

 

As a result of this quagmire and the horrendous conditions that Todd Ashker has had to endure for 26 years – 26 years of no direct sunlight or normal contact with human beings – he has decided to organize to end solitary confinement. Todd has filed lawsuits, organized hunger strikes and, most impressively, a call for a mutually agreed upon ending to hostilities between races and ethnicities in the California prison system.

 

According to this agreement, California prisoners will end group racial violence against one another and will force the prison system to provide rehabilitation programs and end solitary confinement – as they will have no other excuse left not to. It is these incredible circumstances and tortuous conditions that can lead groups that compete, hate and kill each other to find solidarity in a mutual struggle. For these incredible efforts, Todd says he has been refused proper medical care and given a plexiglas cellfront cover that makes his tiny cell incredibly hot, restricts air flow and makes it almost impossible to communicate.

 

What it all seems to come down to is whether or not the citizens of California feel it is worth psychologically torturing people for years – and in some cases decades – in order to keep the prison system safer, a claim debunked by the increase in prison violence since SHUs’ inception. If we object to Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, we surely must object to solitary confinement in the U.S.

 

If the intention of the prison system is rehabilitation so when prisoners are released they do not return, then we surely must object to solitary confinement. If we believe in basic human rights and dignity for all human beings, then we surely must object to solitary confinement. We must also ask ourselves, would I want a friend or family member to be broken down psychologically and tortured for decades by the state?

 

If we object to Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, we surely must object to solitary confinement in the U.S.

 

A society will be remembered by how it treats the most vulnerable and least advantaged individuals within it. Do we want to be remembered for slowly driving people insane for no reason?

 

James Simmons, a graduate student at the California Institute of Integral Studies studying prison activism with Anthropology Department Chair Andrej Grubacic, can be reached at james@alternativeoutlook.org.

 

 

Related articles

PROPOSITION 34: Death penalty initiative losing in early returns

Death penalty opponents saw their effort to abolish capital punishment fall behind in early returns late Tuesday.

64.5 percent of voters had voted no by midnight and 35.5 percent of voters had voted yes.

Voters in the state with the nation’s largest death row were deciding 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.

Three former California governors – two 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 four 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 second time in U.S. history – and the first 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. Five state legislatures have done so in the last five years, including Connecticut this year.

A Field Poll in late September found Proposition 34 failing to gain majority support among likely voters, with 42 percent in favor. Yet the poll also found a softening of support for the death penalty overall, with 45 percent 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.

California’s Death Penalty: All Cost and No Benefit by Danny Glover and Mike Farrell

November 4, 2012 http://www.huffingtonpost.com

While many important issues will be decided this Tuesday, one stands out for its national and historic importance: In California, the future of the death penalty hangs in the balance with Proposition 34. Also known as the SAFE California Act of 2012, Prop 34 will replace the death penalty with life in prison with no possibility of parole.

The fact is, California’s death penalty is all cost and no benefit. The latest Field Poll, out Friday, shows that more voters than ever before support replacing the death penalty, and that Prop 34 is leading in the polls. The Field Poll says 45 percent of likely California voters support Prop 34, while 38 percent oppose. Of those who have already voted, a full 48 percent said they voted yes, while 42 percent voted no.

A big reason for the spectacular surge in support is people’s awareness that the Golden State is flat broke. Voters now understand that the death penalty is far more expensive than life in prison with no chance of parole. They realize that California has sunk billions of dollars into a broken system — while most death row inmates die of old age.

The costs come from special housing, special lawyers and special trials imposed by the U.S. Supreme Court to lessen the risk of executing another innocent person. And those costs really add up. According to The Legislative Analyst’s Office, a nonpartisan government agency, Prop 34 will save the state $130 million every year. A comprehensive five-year study by Federal Judge Arthur Alarcón (who is pro-death penalty) and Loyola Law Professor Paula Mitchell (who is not) showed the state has spent $4 billion on the death penalty since 1978. They’ve just updated that report to show that California is on track to spend $5 to $7 billion, over and above the cost of a sentence of life in prison without parole, between now and 2050. Five to seven billion dollars!

It’s staggering to realize that with all those billions spent, California has executed only 13 inmates since 1978, at a cost of about $307 million per execution.

But money’s not everything. The fact is that the death penalty is not making us any safer. A shocking 46 percent of murders and 56 percent of reported rapes go unsolved in California every year. California Crime Victims for Alternatives to the Death Penalty released a report yesterdayshowing that underfunded, overburdened crime labs with long backlogs can’t process the evidence needed to solve crimes. Prop 34 would direct $100 million of the savings into local law enforcement programs and activities, like DNA testing, fingerprint analysis, and better funding of local crime labs, so we can find the criminals responsible and put them in jail. It’s no secret that the best way to prevent crime is to solve it.

California’s Prop 34 vote has all the markings of a historic shift away from the death penalty in the United States. Support for undoing this ineffective policy in the nation’s largest and most populous state is broad and deep, and includes some surprising voices. Supporters include the lead campaigner for the 1978 death penalty initiative, Ron Briggs, the author of that original law, Don Heller, former LA District Attorney Gil Garcetti and staunch conservative Bill O’Reilly. Jeanne Woodford, a life-long corrections professional who served as Warden of San Quentin and oversaw four executions is the official spokesperson for the initiative. The Sacramento Bee even reversed its 155-year support for the death penalty to endorse YES on 34, joining 47 major newspapers from across the state.

The vote in California will be felt far and wide. Our state has the dubious distinction of housing nearly one-quarter of the nation’s death row inmates and the most expensive death row in the nation. Tragically, California leads the nation in wrongful convictions at 123, according to theNational Registry of Exonerations. So if any state could make another fatal mistake, it’s this one. Passing Prop 34 will ensure that doesn’t happen.

What’s clear is that the death penalty is broken beyond repair, and it’s time to replace it with life in prison without the possibility of parole. We support Prop 34 — and we encourage California voters to get the facts and vote YES on 34 on Tuesday.

California’s longest-serving death row inmate spared execution – Douglas Stankewitz,

October 30,2012 http://www.chicagotribune.com

SACRAMENTO (Reuters) – A federal appeals court has overturned the death sentence of California’s longest serving death row inmate, a 54-year-old Mono Indian man convicted in 1978 for killing a woman during a drug- and alcohol-fueled carjacking.

Douglas Stankewitz, who has spent 34 years awaiting execution, will be re-sentenced to life without the possibility of parole unless prosecutors decide within 90 days to retry the penalty phase of his trial, which would consider punishment only, not guilt or innocence.

The decision late on Monday by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals comes just a week before Californians vote on a referendum to abolish the death penalty in the state.

A federal judge halted all California executions in 2006, saying a three-drug lethal injection protocol risked causing inmates too much pain and suffering before death. California revised its protocol, but executions have not resumed.

An appeals court panel, in a 2-1 decision, ruled that Stankewitz received ineffective legal counsel during the penalty phase of his murder trial, when he was sentenced to die.

His lawyer, they wrote, failed to investigate and present evidence “including evidence of his deprived and abusive upbringing, potential mental illness, long history of substance abuse and use of substantial quantities of drugs leading up to the murder.”

In a recent interview with Reuters inside San Quentin State Prison, Stankewitz called the death penalty “a joke,” and described how long delays in the appeals process, coupled with ineffective counsel, had led to him spending more than three decades waiting to die.

“They can’t kill me because the system is messed up so bad,” Stankewitz told Reuters during that interview.

Stankewitz suffered alcohol exposure in the womb, was removed from his home at age 6 after his mother beat him and bounced between foster care facilities where he was severely troubled and abused, court documents show.

He was 19 when he and a group of friends carjacked Theresa Graybeal, 22, from a K-Mart parking lot in Modesto and drove across California’s rural heartland to Fresno, roughly 100 miles away. There, Graybeal was shot and killed.

Vote Yes on Prop 34 by Frank Carrillo (Exonerated of murder after 20 years in prison)

October 23, 2012 http://www.huffingtonpost.com

Freedom.

It’s hard to imagine it being taken away without just cause. But it happens — more often than you might think.

When I was just 16 years old, I was stripped of my freedom, wrongfully convicted of a murder I did not commit. I spent twenty years behind bars before I was finally able to prove my innocence.

But I always wonder, if I had been sentenced to death, would I have been able to prove my innocence in time?

This is why I believe so strongly in Proposition 34, which will replace California’s death penalty with life in prison without possibility of parole. With the election just two weeks away, it’s a critical time to make sure California voters hear about the true costs of the death penalty.

Today we’re launching our first Yes on 34 TV ad across the state’s airwaves, urging millions of California voters to replace the death penalty with life in prison without parole. With this new ad, my story will travel farther than ever before — on television.

Most people can’t imagine being found guilty of a crime they didn’t commit. I never expected that my youth would slip away in prison after I was wrongly convicted. But with this new TV ad, millions of viewers across the state can hear my real-life story and learn that our criminal justice system is good but not perfect. I am living proof that with the death penalty we always risk the execution of an innocent person.

I am honored by the all-star team that came together to help share my story of wrongful conviction with voters — including Emmy-winner Martin Sheen, iconic actor and director Edward James Olmos, Grammy- and Academy Award-winner and world-famous musician Hans Zimmer and Lili Haydn, the “Jimi Hendrix” of violin.

Also Donald Heller, the man who wrote California’s death penalty law, will be sharing his story on the radio. He explains that he never considered the costs of implementing the law and now sees it as a “huge” mistake that also risks the execution of an innocent person.

Voting Yes on Proposition 34 makes sense for California. We can save $130 million every single year by replacing the death penalty with life in prison without the possibility of parole. This money can be better spent on education and on tools that actually improve safety in our communities, like testing DNA evidence and investigating unsolved murders. We can also make sure that California never makes an irreversible mistake.

The TV ad that tells my story is just one part of the path to victory for Prop 34. You’ll be hearing our message on the radio and seeing our volunteer teams on the ground across California. We have two weeks left to get the facts about the death penalty to as many voters as possible. We can’t do this without the help from our hard-working volunteers. Will you sign up to help Proposition 34 win on November 6? Then watch our campaign ad, and share with everyone you know.

Together, on November 6, we’ll make history.

Does The Death Penalty Provide ‘Closure’ to Victim’s Families? Three Perspectives

October 18, 2012 http://blogs.kqed.org

This coming election Californians will decide on Proposition 34, which would outlaw the death penalty and replace it with life in prison without the possibility of parole. It would also direct $30 million a year for three years to investigate unsolved rape and murder cases.

The measure is the latest chapter in a seesaw legal and political dispute over capital punishment that stretches back 50 years in California.

But setting aside the main argument of the “Yes on 34″ camp, that the billions of dollars spent on the death penalty could better be used to solve crimes; and “No on 34″ backers, that the death penalty process could be made more efficient and cheaper, there’s another issue that often comes up in the overall debate.

Many supporters of the death penalty say it is the only fair societal consequence for the perpetrators of the most heinous crimes, and that it gives victims’ families a sense of closure. Scott Shafer has been following this question around the death penalty for more than a dozen years, and he frequently addresses the question of closure in his reporting.

Earlier this year, Shafer interviewed Mark Klaas, father of Polly Klaas — the 12-year-old girl who was kidnapped from her Petaluma home and murdered by Richard Allen Davis. Klaas has long been an advocate of the death penalty and opposes Prop. 34. He told Shafer that families say witnessing the execution of the perpetrator of a crime against a family member has helped them.

Mark Klaas: It does make a difference. It’s about carrying out the law. It’s about the final judgment. Those individuals I’ve talked to -– family members who have witnessed executions — are grateful for the experience, sad that it had to come to that, but satisfied that justice has been fulfilled.

Scott Shafer: What do you mean they’re sad it had to come to that?

Mark Klaas: Well the taking of a life is not something that should ever be looked upon lightly. And nobody finds great joy in it, including the families of murder victims. And they know this better than anyone else. But it is the law, and it is a final judgment…

I believe [Davis’] execution would bring closure to my daughter. She is the one that he contemplates as he acts out in his prison cell. It’s not going to change my life one way or the other. But I don’t invest a lot of time or energy in thinking about Richard Allen Davis. He’s dominated my family’s life quite enough as it is. I’m content to see him at least be on death row and know that at some point he may have to face that final judgment.

As warden at San Quentin Prison, home of California’s only death row for men, Jeanne Woodford presided over four executions. She says it’s a “natural reaction,” to want someone who harmed a loved one to die, but says she thinks that closure does not come to pass for families. Shafer explored this question with her in an interview he conducted late last year. Woodford told him:

People wait years for an execution that may or may not happen. People come to the prison thinking that the execution will somehow bring closure to them. I’ve just never had someone who that’s happened to.

In fact, I’ve had reporters tell me that family members told them a month or two after the execution that they regretted having been involved in the process.

Then there’s the story of Gayle Orr, whom Shafer interviewed 10 years ago. In 1980 Orr’s 19-year-old daughter was stabbed and killed near Auburn. Her daughter’s murderer was tried, convicted and sentenced to death. Orr entered what she calls a “period of darkness” during which she felt isolated and consumed with rage.

Eventually she started attending and taking classes at church, where a common topic was forgiveness. A classmate suggested that Orr should forgive her daughter’s murderer, which at first infuriated her  but ultimately prompted her to write a letter of forgiveness to her daughter’s killer.

“And the instant that I put that letter in the mailbox,” she told Shafer in that 2002 interview and confirmed in a phone call last week, “all the anger, all the rage, all the darkness that I’ve been carrying around, all the ugliness I’ve been carrying around in my body for 12 long years, instantly was gone. Just gone. And in its place I was filled with this sense of joy and love. And I was truly in a state of grace, simply from offering forgiveness to another human being.”

It’s now been 20 years since Orr mailed that letter. Since then she has created a foundation in her daughter’s name, dedicated to forgiveness and a peaceful world. Orr changed her name to “Aba Gayle,” which she says means “beloved of the Father,” and she is “totally and absolutely opposed to the death penalty under any circumstances.”

She believes that carrying anger and rage toward another person perpetuates one’s sense of being a victim. “Being a victim is a choice,” she says “and I have chosen not to be a victim any longer. … Not only did I heal myself, I healed my whole family. When you’re filled with rage, you can’t be a wife, you can’t be a mother, so healing that rage does so much benefit, not just to me, but to everyone around me.”

Aba Gayle said she still grieves for her daughter, and while she doesn’t believe her daughter’s murderer should be executed, she believes he should spend his life in prison.