California

CALIFORNIA – Kill the death penalty

October 18, 2012 http://www.newsreview.com/

In 1978, a man named Ron Briggs ran the campaign for Proposition 7, which proposed to expand California’s death penalty law to make it among the toughest in the country. Briggs was the son of John Briggs, a Republican state senator who strongly supported the measure. It was written by Donald J. Heller, a former prosecutor. The Briggs Initiative, as it was called, passed resoundingly.

Since then Ron Briggs and Heller have had a change of heart. Today they are campaigning vigorously on behalf of Proposition 34, the SAFE California initiative that would end the death penalty and replace it with mandatory life without parole.

Their goal with Proposition 7, Briggs has written, was to broaden the murder categories eligible for the death penalty and “give prosecutors better tools for meting out just punishments” and warn “all California evildoers that the state would deliver swift and final justice.”

They now realize, however, that it didn’t work. There were 300 people on death row in 1978; today there are more than 720. Only 13 death row prisoners have been executed since their measure passed—far more have died of natural causes—and the state has spent $4 billion trying to enforce capital punishment. Eliminating it could save $183 million annually.

Opponents of Proposition 34 argue that it forgoes justice in order to save money. But where’s the justice? As Briggs writes, it’s “a nightmarish system that coddles murderers and enriches lawyers.” Meanwhile, the families of victims suffer because they’re forced over and over to face the alleged murderer in a series of mandated appeals that, because of a shortage of judges and public defenders, can take decades to exhaust.

Opponents of Proposition 34 also argue that the death penalty deters crime, but study after study shows that’s simply not true. States without the death penalty have murder rates similar to, and sometimes lower than, those of states with capital punishment.

In addition, the death penalty is applied in a biased manner. Proportionally, blacks are sentenced to death far more often than whites, especially when the victim is white.

Finally, there’s the matter of innocence. DNA testing has exonerated more than 2,000 prisoners, including many on death row. It’s a virtual certainty that some innocent people have been executed. Death is a punishment that cannot be reversed.

For all of these reasons, it’s time to abolish the death penalty in California. Vote yes on Proposition 34.

 

CALIFORNIA -Loretta Carrico Russell: Two sisters murdered, but I’m against death penalty

October 14, 2012 http://www.redding.com

Californians will decide this November whether or not the death penalty dies by a vote of the people. Supporters of Savings Accountability Full Enforcement California Act or S.A.F.E. California, an anti-death penalty group, successfully gathered more than a half-million signatures to qualify the initiative for the ballot.

Being an opponent of the death penalty did not come easily to me. My conviction is motivated by 40 years of dealing with this emotional issue on a deeply personal level. Initially, I was in favor of the death penalty. I wanted revenge for my sisters. Karen was 21 when she was murdered by her husband. Her death was deemed an accidental beating.

Twenty years later, my sister Irene was murdered by her husband for leaving him.

Irene’s murder would have been a capital offense, according to the judge, had the accused not turned over state’s evidence. How could a small piece of rope used in the hog-tying strangulation of my sister mitigate the horrific torture that led to her death?

The killer told police where he hid the rope and for that he now lives in Solano prison.  He was given a life sentence. At the time, I wanted both killers to suffer the same fate my sisters had, and to endure the physical and psychological terror that comes from knowing someone is ending your life.

Despite its liberal reputation, California has the unfortunate distinction of having the nation’s largest death row, housing 20 percent of all such inmates in the U.S. Los Angeles County alone has the most death row convicts, more than the entire state of Texas.

However, the reality of the death penalty in California is different from the hype. In the 33 years since its reinstatement, the state has executed 13 people or 1 percent of its death row population.

Some begrudge the price of providing inmates with “three hots and a cot.” But the cost of incarceration is relatively cheap compared with the alternative of having criminals on the streets or the cost of a lengthy appeals process.

We can’t have it both ways: lock them up and then complain about the cost of incarceration. Since the state re-established the death penalty in 1978, it has spent $4 billion on death penalty cases.

This money could be better spent on law enforcement and in preventive measures, such as an improved domestic violence detection and treatment. And the cost does not factor in the lives of those executed and later found to be innocent.

Unlike most people, for me the death penalty doesn’t come from a particular political bent, but a selfish one. The death penalty is neither a liberal nor a conservative issue, but a family one. It’s the victim’s family who are forced to relive the loss of their loved one each time the case is revisited in court.

A life sentence and the death penalty aren’t much different for the victim’s family. In both cases, the family has to relive the nightmare each time the killer gets another day in court, whether on appeal or a bid for parole.

The toll this process takes on a family member’s physical and mental health is incalculable. For years I lived with the corrosive anger of wanting revenge, before realizing I was allowing myself to continue to be victimized.

Knowing the killer is off the streets and not able to harm another was enough for me to put the trauma and pain of losing a sister into its proper perspective and move forward in life.

Not all murders are created equal, but those convicted of murder as heinous as Irene’s, the murders that would otherwise merit the death penalty, should be sentenced to prison with absolutely no possibility of parole, unless irrefutable evidence surfaces warranting a new trial.

Initially given 25 years to life, Irene’s killer is coming up for parole for the second time this December. He declined his first parole hearing, thinking he had a better chance at his second one.

He spent the last three years performing the tasks he was supposed to do all along to show the parole board that he has changed. One task was to write a letter of apology to the victim’s family.

It took him a staggering 24 years to send a letter, and it was full of excuses rather than remorse for what he’d done. I will be there at his parole hearing to remind him and the board of what he did to my sister, and the grave danger he poses to other, unsuspecting women.

In November, my vote will be to have California join the other 17 states that have already banned the death penalty. Firm and fair incarceration for those convicted is what I seek.

I want the resources now spent on the lengthy death penalty appeals process used to reduce the chances that other Californians will suffer as Irene did, and, ultimately, as my family did.

I speak only for myself, but my hope is that when you’re voting on this measure you will consider the families who have had to repeatedly relive the agony of losing their loved one and vote to end the California death penalty.

 

Loretta Carrico Russell lives in Round Montain

CALIFORNIA – Judge orders competency tests for accused Oakland shooter -GOH

october 1, 2012 http://www.chicagotribune.com

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – A California judge ordered mental competency tests on Monday for a former nursing student accused of killing seven people and wounding three in an April shooting rampage at a Christian college in Oakland.

Alameda County Superior Court Judge Carrie Panetta ordered two clinicians to assess One Goh’s competency after his attorney questioned whether he was fit to stand trial, said Teresa Drenick, a spokeswoman for the Alameda County District Attorney.

Goh, 43, is charged with seven counts of first-degree murder and three counts of attempted murder. He has pleaded not guilty.

The April 2 shooting spree at Oikos University, where Goh once attended nursing school, was the deadliest at an American college since 2007, when a Virginia Tech University student killed 32 people and wounded 25.

The district attorney has not decided whether to seek the death penalty.

Drenick said Goh would reappear in court on November 19.

Authorities said they believe Goh became angry after he dropped out of the nursing school last year and administrators refused to refund his tuition. Oikos University is a vocational school founded by a Presbyterian minister from Korea in 2004.

Goh told investigators he went to the school in an industrial area of Oakland armed with a .45-caliber handgun and four magazines fully loaded with ammunition, according to court documents.

He was arrested within hours of the shooting and refused food for four weeks following his arrest.

SOUTH CALIFORNIA – Death Row inmate’s conviction overturned – Armenia Cudjo

September 30, 2012 http://www.sfgate.com

A federal appeals court overturned the conviction and death sentence of a Southern California man in the 1986 battering death of a female neighbor because the jury wasn’t told that the defendant’s brother had admitted the killing to a cellmate.

Armenia Cudjo, now 54, was convicted of robbing and murdering Amelia Prokuda, whose partially clad body was found in her apartment in the desert community of Littlerock (Los Angeles County). A bloodstained hammer was found nearby.

Cudjo said he had been at the victim’s home that day and had sex with her but didn’t kill her. He said the killer was his brother Gregory, who more closely resembled a description of the intruder by the victim’s 5-year-old son. Gregory Cudjo told police his brother had confessed the murder to him.

Armenia Cudjo’s lawyer tried to present testimony by John Culver, who said Gregory Cudjo had admitted the killing in a cell at the sheriff’s office, but the trial judge barred the testimony. The state Supreme Court said the testimony should have been allowed but ruled 5-2 in 1993 that it wouldn’t have mattered because Culver had little credibility and the prosecution’s case was strong.

But the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled 2-1 on Friday that the trial judge had violated Cudjo’s right to present a defense. The ruling entitles him to a new trial.

Cudjo’s public defender obtained a sworn statement from Gregory Cudjo in 2008 acknowledging that he had made the admission to Culver, though he didn’t say whether he was telling the truth.

“After 26 years on Death Row, Armenia is glad to have a chance to get his life back,” the lawyer, John Littrell, said Friday.

Californians favor change of three-strikes law but not death penalty

October 1,2012 http://www.insidebayarea.com

LOS ANGELES — California voters support easing the state’s tough three-strikes sentencing law by more than 3 to 1 but are reluctant to abolish the death penalty, according to a University of Southern California Dornsife/Los Angeles Times poll.

The poll results come as voters ponder two ballot measures that, if approved, would make the most sweeping changes to the state’s criminal justice system in decades.

Support for an initiative that aims to replace capital punishment with life in prison without parole is trailing 38 percent to 51 percent, the poll found. But that gap narrows to a statistical dead heat when voters learn that Proposition 34 also requires convicted killers to work while in prison, directs their earnings to their victims and earmarks $100 million for police to solve murders and rapes.

Despite voters’ ambivalence over capital punishment, a ballot measure seeking to amend the three-strikes law is attracting strong support from a broad cross section, including conservatives. Proposition 36 takes aim at what critics of three strikes call its unfairest feature by changing the law so that offenders whose third strikes were relatively minor, such as shoplifting or drug possession, could no longer be sentenced to 25 years to life in prison.

“We’ve built this society on the idea that the penalty depends on the crime,” said poll respondent Hamilton Cerna, 31, a registered Republican from Downey who works as an employee relations consultant. “If you’re going to take away somebody’s freedom, then I feel like it should be for a damn good reason.”

The measure to soften the three-strikes law was backed by 66 percent, with only 20 percent opposed and 14 percent undecided or not answering. Both ballot initiatives need a simple majority to pass.

The USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences/Los Angeles Times poll canvassed 1,504 registered voters from Sept. 17 to 23. The survey was conducted jointly by the Democratic polling company Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research and the Republican firm American Viewpoint. The margin of error is 2.9 percentage points.

The propositions target two of California’s most iconic and controversial tough-on-crime sentencing laws.

The “Three Strikes and You’re Out” law won overwhelming voter approval in 1994 amid heightened public anxiety over crime. The law targets offenders who have previous convictions for at least two serious or violent crimes, such as rape or robbery. Any new felony conviction can trigger a prison sentence of at least 25 years to life.

Of nearly 8,900 third-strikers serving potential life terms, about a third were convicted of drug or nonserious property crimes.

Proposition 36 would end life terms for such offenders, who would instead be treated as if they had only one previous strike and be sentenced to double the standard prison term for their latest crime. With the change, a third-striker who would have faced a 25-years-to-life sentence for a nonviolent theft that normally carries two years in prison instead would face four years.

Inmates already serving 25 years to life for nonserious and nonviolent offenses could get a reduction in their sentences if a judge decides they do not pose an unreasonable risk to the public. The proposition’s changes would not apply to offenders with previous convictions for murder, rape or child molestation, or to those whose latest offense involved a sex crime, major drug dealing or use of a firearm.

Advocates to ease the law are making their pitch while the state is under a federal court order to reduce its teeming prison population. They hope to appeal to a large swath of voters who usually favor tough-on-crime laws by emphasizing the measure’s support from Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley, LAPD Chief Charlie Beck and anti-tax advocate Grover Norquist.

More than half of voters who described themselves as conservative said they supported amending the three-strikes law, with slightly more than a quarter opposing the measure, according to the poll.

“It’s not fair to taxpayers. It’s not fair to the offender,” said Don Chapman of Anaheim, a registered Republican who used to oversee drivers and equipment for a distribution company before retiring.

Although the poll gives the initiative a large advantage, a 2004 attempt to amend the three-strikes law held a similar lead in polls until an advertising blitz by opponents in the final week of the campaign. That proposition lost 53 percent to 47 percent.

The current measure is opposed by victims rights groups and more than a dozen law enforcement associations, including the California District Attorneys Association and the union that represents rank-and-file LAPD officers.

Opponents note that judges already have the authority to spare a third-striker the maximum sentence. They argue that the proposed amendment removes a powerful tool that has put away dangerous offenders before they could hurt more people.

Norman Tripp, a retired corrections officer and supervising prison counselor who participated in the survey, said he believes the initiative would result in more crime.

“At what point does society say, ‘I’m going to end this person preying on people’?” Tripp, of Susanville, asked.

Proposition 34 offers Californians their first opportunity to decide whether the state should have the death penalty since two-thirds of voters amended the state Constitution to allow capital punishment in 1972.

Only 13 inmates have been put to death in California since executions resumed and none since 2006. California has more than 725 inmates on death row, the most in the nation, and they are more likely to die of old age, illness or suicide than by lethal injection.

The USC Dornsife/Times poll mirrors similar surveys finding that support for the death penalty has waned. When voters were read the proposition language on the November ballot, 43 percent favored Proposition 34, with 45 percent against. The margin of error for that result was 4.1 percent.

The escalating costs of the death penalty — an issue highlighted by the proposition’s supporters — did not move respondents. After voters were told the state could save as much as $130 million annually by abolishing capital punishment, opponents of Proposition 34 still outnumbered supporters by the same margin — 46 percent to 44 percent.

Pollsters said the overall results did not bode well for the measure and show that most voters already have firm opinions on the issue.

CALIFORNIA – Arsonist gets death penalty in fatal Old fire – Rickie Lee Fowler

September 29, 2012 http://www.latimes.com

Death sentence in Old fire

 San Bernardino County jury on Friday ordered a death sentence for the violent methamphetamine addict convicted of setting the catastrophic 2003 Old fire that destroyed 1,000 homes, blackened the San Bernardino Mountains and led to five deaths.

The jury in August found that Rickie Lee Fowler deliberately set the blaze by tossing a lighted road flare into brush at the base of the mountains on an October day when Southern California already was overwhelmed by wind-fed wildfires, convicting him of murder and arson.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Robert Bullock portrayed Fowler as an evil and sadistic felon who inflicted “misery and mayhem” on those who crossed his path throughout his life — raping and brutalizing two girlfriends, one of whom was pregnant with his son, and sodomizing a jail cellmate whom he turned into a “sex slave.”

“I would like to thank the jury for doing the right thing. This is one of those crimes that reaches out and grabs you by the throat,” Bulloch at a news conference afterward.

Superior Court Judge Michael A. Smith is scheduled to sentence Fowler on Nov. 16. The judge has the legal authority to dismiss the jury’s recommendation and instead sentence Fowler to life in prison without the possibility of parole, but such an action is rare in California.

Smith noted that Californians on Nov. 6 will vote on a proposed ballot initiative — Proposition 34 — that, if approved, would abolish the death penalty and replace it with life in prison without the possibility of parole.

“Depending on what happens with that, it could affect sentencing in this matter,” Smith said during Friday’s hearing.

Dist. Atty. Michael Ramos said it would be a travesty of justice if California voters approved the measure, in effect granting Fowler and “baby murderers and cop killers” a reprieve from death row.

“We cannot allow a proposition to overturn what happened today in San Bernardino County for these five victims,” Ramos said.

The jury spent 11 days deliberating Fowler’s sentence, its final act in a trial that began in late July. Jurors declined to comment afterward, and no relatives of the Old fire victims attended the hearing.

Fowler, wearing a baggy dress shirt and charcoal slacks, showed little emotion when the death recommendation was read, only leaning over to whisper to his attorney Michael Belter.

Belter said his client was relieved that the deliberations had finally ended, but “obviously Mr. Fowler was disappointed with the result.”

Fowler’s attorneys plan to file a motion for a new trial, arguing that the prosecution did not present any direct evidence showing that Fowler had set the blaze or that the deaths were intentional. All five deaths were due to heart attacks triggered by the stress of the fire, according to prosecution testimony.

Belter said that during his conversation with jurors after Friday’s hearing it was clear that they spent a lot of time considering those arguments. “I think the jury went back and forth,” he said. “They had different splits, they had a lot to talk about.”

The prosecutor said Fowler deliberately set the blaze in Waterman Canyon in a fit of rage against his godfather, who had kicked Fowler out of his house at the top of the canyon.

The fire broke out Oct. 25, 2003, at Old Waterman Canyon Road and California 18, and raced through the forest and brush, forcing the evacuation of more than 30 communities and 80,000 people. It came as firefighters were battling a blaze in Upland and Rancho Cucamonga. Six men died of heart attacks, although prosecutors said one could not be directly linked to the stress of the fire.

A few months later, on Christmas Day, a huge debris flow — caused by intense rain on the denuded slopes of the burn area — swept through a church camp in Waterman Canyon, killing 14 people. Fowler was not charged in that incident.

Investigators said they questioned Fowler shortly after the fire but did not have enough evidence to arrest him at that time. Another suspect in the fire, Martin Valdez, 24, was fatally shot in Muscoy, near San Bernardino, in 2006. At the time of the fire, witnesses reported seeing Fowler and Valdez in a white van throwing a flaming object into Waterman Canyon.

Much of the prosecution’s case hinged on comments Fowler made in 2008 in which he acknowledged to investigators that he was attempting to burn down the home of a friend, but denied that he was the one who set the blaze. Fowler told investigators that he went to the back of the van and took out a flare, but that Valdez grabbed the flare and tossed it.

CALIFORNIA – Field Poll: Death penalty proposition support closely divided

September 25, 2012 http://abclocal.go.com

BERKELEY, Calif.  — The results of a statewide survey conducted by the Institute of Governmental Studies at University of California-Berkeley and The Field Poll were released Tuesday. The survey sought to determine prospective voting support and opposition to Proposition 34.

California’s Proposition 34 initiative would repeal California’s death penalty and make life in prison the ultimate penalty for a capital crime. It would go into effect the day after election and apply to all on death row.

More Democrats and independents support Prop. 34, while Republicans tend to oppose the proposition.

Of total likely voters, 42 percent of respondents said they would vote for Prop. 34. Forty-five percent of respondents said they would vote “no” on Prop. 34. Undecided voters made up 13 percent of likely-voter respondents.

Of likely Democratic voters responding, 50 percent said they would vote “yes” for Prop. 34, while 37 percent said they would vote “no”; 13 percent of Democrats were undecided.

Of likely Republican voters responding, 23 percent said they would vote “yes” on Prop. 34, while 65 percent would vote “no”; 12 percent were undecided.

Survey results revealed strongest support for Prop. 34 among political liberals, African-Americans, voters in the nine-county San Francisco Bay Area, and those who have completed post-graduate collegiate work.

The results revealed opposition is greatest among political conservatives and inland residents, particularly those in Northern California outside the Bay Area.

Currently there are more than 700 inmates on death row, the highest in the U.S. No inmate has been executed in California in five years due to a legal battle over execution procedures.

The average delay between sentencing and execution is more than 25 years.

Seventeen U.S. states have abolished the death penalty.

Data reveal public opinion moving away from the death penalty in the past 20 years nationwide and in the state. Earlier respondents believed the death penalty was less expensive than life in jail without parole.

Former supporters working to overturn the death penalty contend the penalty is a waste of money.

The official analysis by the California Legislative Analyst and Director of Finance says Prop. 34 “could” provide savings in the high tens of millions of dollars a year.

Supporters of the death penalty say that changes could be made to speed the process and reduce costs.

The death penalty has been in contention in California since the 1970s, beginning in 1972 when the death penalty was ruled unconstitutional. The penalty has been halted and reinstated several times.

Lon Allan: Panels to debate death penalty

September 25,2012 http://www.sanluisobispo.com

All my life, I have favored the death penalty. I have always believed it deters crime, that execution is cheaper than life sentences for our most dangerous criminals and that the timely application of the death penalty offers relief and a sense of justice served to victims’ families.

I continue to hold to the above frame of mind, but discussions lately regarding doing away with the death penalty have me questioning the practice. Proposition 34 on the upcoming November ballot is asking Californians to put an end to the death penalty.

A friend of mine who is a member of the Yes on Prop. 34 Committee sent me some information on the subject along with the dates of two seminars coming up very soon dealing with the issue.

The first panel presentation will be held Sunday at 7 p.m. at Oak Creek Commons, 635 Nicklaus Ave. in Paso Robles. Guest panelists include Jay Adams, Ph.D., clinical psychologist with 10 years at the California Men’s Colony; The Rev. Lyle Grosjean, a death penalty opponent/activist for 50 years; Jaimee Karroll, a survivor of a violent crime and now a teacher at San Quentin; and Tom Parker, former deputy chief agent for the Los Angeles region of the FBI. I got to know and respect the Rev. Grosjean when he served as pastor of the local Episcopal Church many years ago.

There will be an opportunity to ask questions at this event.

The next night, Monday, there will be a panel discussion in the Chumash Auditorium at Cal Poly at 7 p.m. In addition to the Rev. Grosjean, Adams, Parker and Karroll, this panel will include Lesley Becker, graduating senior of Poly’s social science department, and Chris Bickel, professor of sociology at Cal Poly.

I’m interested in learning more about the whole subject. Former U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno is quoted in material I received from the Yes on Prop. 34 folks as saying, “I have inquired for most of my adult life about studies that might show that the death penalty is a deterrent. And I have not seen any research that would substantiate that point.”

I remember a crime scene here in Atascadero where two young people had just been killed. Their small children were protected by their mother’s body. I was glad when the killer was convicted and sentenced to the death penalty. That was almost 30 years ago. I still think he deserves to die for what he did.

But at this stage of my life, I find myself questioning a lot of what I thought I believed.

I have a lot of homework to do between now and Nov. 6.

Reach him at 466-8529 or leallan@tcsn.net.

CALIFORNIA – Death Row inmates oppose Prop. 34

September 24, 2012 http://www.sfgate.com

Like other state prisoners, the 725 inmates on California’s Death Row can’t vote. But if they could, there’s evidence that most of them would vote against a November ballot initiative to abolish the death penalty.

It’s not that they want to die, attorney Robert Bryan said. They just want to hang on to the possibility of proving that they’re innocent, or at least that they were wrongly convicted. That would require state funding for lawyers and investigators – funding that Proposition 34 would eliminate for many Death Row inmates after the first round of appeals.

Bryan has represented several condemned prisoners in California as well as Mumia Abu-Jamal, the radical activist and commentator whose death sentence for the murder of a Philadelphia policeman was recently reduced to life in prison. The attorney said California inmates have told him they’d prefer the current law, with its prospect of lethal injection, to one that would reduce their appellate rights.

“Many of them say, ‘I’d rather gamble and have the death penalty dangling there but be able to fight to right a wrong,’ ” Bryan said.

Or, as Death Row inmate Correll Thomas put it in a recent newspaper essay, if Prop. 34 passes, “the courthouse doors will be slammed forever.”

Added legal rights

The seeming paradox reflects the tangled legal procedures surrounding capital punishment and the state’s efforts to guard against wrongful convictions and executions by providing additional rights to the condemned.

All criminal defendants who can’t afford to hire a lawyer have a right to legal representation, at state expense, for their trial and appeal. But only those sentenced to death are guaranteed a state-funded legal team for the post-appellate proceedings known as habeas corpus.

Habeas corpus allows inmates to challenge their convictions or sentence for reasons outside the trial record – typically, incompetent legal representation, misconduct by a judge or juror, or newly discovered evidence. Such challenges are reviewed by both state and federal courts.

For condemned prisoners, it often represents their best chance to stave off execution by presenting their claims to federal judges, who are appointed for life, rather than elected state judges. A ruling that leads to their acquittal, or even a finding of innocence, is also more likely in habeas corpus than in the earlier direct appeal.

Life without parole

Prop. 34, on the Nov. 6 ballot, would replace the death penalty with life in prison without parole. Death Row inmates would have their sentences reduced to life – and, as a consequence, lose access to state-funded lawyers for habeas corpus, except for those who have already filed their claims.

They would have to file them on their own, or with volunteer lawyers. A judge who finds strong evidence of innocence could order the state to pay the inmate’s legal costs for further proceedings.

More than 300 inmates would be affected by the measure’s passage, said Bryan, who as a state-appointed habeas corpus lawyer won a state Supreme Court ruling last month overturning a death sentence for a double murder in San Jose.

Same legal footing

Attorney Natasha Minsker, the Yes on 34 campaign manager, said the initiative would place now-condemned inmates “in the same position as every prisoner convicted of a serious felony in California,” with the same right to go to court.

They would no longer automatically get state-funded lawyers for habeas corpus claims, Minsker said. The main purpose of those lawyers now is “to save a person’s life” from a wrongful execution, but that task would disappear if Prop. 34 passed, she said.

No one has polled Death Row inmates on Prop. 34. But an organization called the Campaign to End the Death Penalty sent letters to 220 condemned prisoners in California and received about 50 replies, all but three of them against the ballot measure, said Lily Mae Hughes, the group’s director.

The reasons were described in commentaries carried in June by San Francisco’s BayView newspaper from three condemned prisoners, two of them opposing Prop. 34.

“We are in fact taking a step backward in our ability to challenge our convictions,” said Kevin Cooper, convicted of murdering four people, including two children, in San Bernardino County after his escape from prison in 1983. State and federal courts have upheld his death sentence, although five federal judges declared in a dissenting opinion two years ago that they believed he might be innocent.

Thomas, whose death sentence for the fatal shooting of a San Diego motorist was upheld by the state Supreme Court last year, said fellow inmates agree with him that life without parole is “another death penalty.”

Donald Ray Young, one of two brothers sentenced to death for the 1995 murders of five people at a bar in Tulare – crimes they deny committing – supported Prop. 34.

“Let us choose the ballot box,” he wrote, “or the pine box will choose us.”

CALIFORNIA – Yes on Prop. 34; death penalty in state is broken

September 21, 2012 http://www.vcstar.com

Proposition 34 on the Nov. 6 ballot would repeal the death penalty in California and replace it with life imprisonment without possibility of parole.

The Star recommends a yes vote.

The policy change would save the state and counties more than $1 billion during the next 10 years, and the savings would be larger in the future, according to the state’s independent, nonpartisan Legislative Analyst.

On an annual basis, the savings would start at around $100 million in each of the first few years and grow to roughly $130 million a year, the Legislative Analyst estimated. Also, Proposition 34 would provide a total of $100 million over the next four years for law enforcement agencies to investigate homicide and rape cases.

For the initiative to pass, it must be approved by a majority of voters. Californians on each side of the death-penalty debate hold strong opinions and understandably so.

The Star has traditionally opposed capital punishment believing that it is unevenly administered and disproportionately applied to minorities. DNA evidence, which has resulted in death-row inmates being exonerated, also proves that mistakes can be made.

In reality, few of those sentenced to death are executed. Since 1978, when the current death-penalty law was enacted, about 900 people have been sentenced to death in California. Fourteen of them were executed.

Six times as many — a total of 83 convicts — died before they could be executed.

Meanwhile, as of July, 725 criminals were in state prison with death sentences, at considerable cost to taxpayers. (If Proposition 34 passes, their sentences will change to life without possibility of parole.)

The costs include higher state and county expenses associated with death-penalty murder trials, heightened security procedures for death-row convicts, and mandatory and unavoidable court appeals that stretch over many years in most death-penalty cases.

Besides the enormous cost, the practical effect of these lengthy delays has been to reduce the death penalty in California to a myth. It exists in name only. The billions of taxpayer dollars spent over the past decades only kept a broken system limping along and preserved the illusion of capital punishment.

From The Star’s perspective, Proposition 34 offers a more practical alternative. If it passes, the worst felons would be sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole. They would be required to work in prison and make payments to victims of crime, though nothing can make up for a heinous crime — not cash payments, not life in prison, and not even execution.

But this way, at least there would be the certainty that heinous killers will die in prison, instead of making victims’ families suffer for decades in California’s grotesque charade about executions that probably won’t occur at all.

That’s the reality of the situation in California today. It’s time to admit this expensive system isn’t working. The Star recommends voting yes on Proposition 34.