Legislation Calling for a Suspension of Executions in CA Assembly

For Immediate Release
June 15, 2005

Legislation Calling for a Suspension of Executions
Introduced in the California State Assembly

(Sacramento) Opponents of the death penalty applauded yesterday's introduction of a bill that would place a temporary moratorium –or “time out” – on executions in California while the bipartisan California Commission on the Fair Administration Justice completes an examination of the state’s flawed criminal justice system. In announcing his bill to halt executions in the nation’s largest state, Assemblyman Paul Koretz (D-West Hollywood) was joined by fellow legislators as well as six people exonerated of serious crimes they did not commit but for which they were convicted. Parents of a young California woman who was murdered also were present to support the bill.

Assemblyman Koretz’s legislation to suspend executions in California comes at a time of diminishing public support for state killing. The number of death sentences and executions continues to fall across the country, now at its lowest level since 1999. A CBS News poll from April 2005 found that support for the death penalty dropped to a low of 39% when respondents were asked to choose between a sentence of death or Life without Possibility of Parole as a punishment for murderers.

“It is simply common sense – in light of the growing numbers of wrongful convictions in our state – for the government to suspend the execution of prisoners while the newly established Senate Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice examines the serious flaws and failures in our criminal justice system,” said Lance Lindsey, Executive Director of Death Penalty Focus.

The movement for a “time out” on executions in California has been growing since 2000, when Illinois Governor George Ryan declared a moratorium on executions in his state after the discovery of 13 innocent people on Illinois’s death row. More than 640 men and women await execution on California’s death row, the largest in the nation. As with death penalty systems across the country, numerous studies of California’s death system have documented injustices, unfairness and human error that have called into question the accuracy of death penalty convictions across the state.

At least 170, 000 Californians, more than 425 organizations, all of California’s major newspapers, 11 city councils and 4 counties have already called for a suspension of executions in California.

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San Francisco Chronicle
Moratorium sought on death penalty
Assembly Dems say innocent person may be executed
- John M. Hubbell, Chronicle Sacramento Bureau
Wednesday, June 15, 2005

Sacramento -- A group of Assembly Democrats announced on Tuesday a coming effort to place a moratorium on capital punishment, declaring California is at grave risk of taking the life of an innocent person, unless the state pauses to scrutinize possible flaws in the justice system.

Assemblyman Paul Koretz, D-West Hollywood (Los Angeles County), said he would introduce a bill next year to halt executions until January 2009 -- about a year after a report is due from an expert panel established by the state Senate to scrutinize how capital punishment is applied.

Citing a number of overturned convictions, several of them death-penalty cases, Koretz said California stands "at grave risk of executing an innocent person" unless it first examines a range of issues associated with the death penalty. The debate over capital punishment has in recent years been infused with accusations of uneven implementation and has been stoked by DNA evidence testing, which has exonerated several convicts in various types of cases.

"We can't take the risk that we're going to get it wrong again and send an innocent person to their death," Koretz said. "Time is of the essence."

Koretz was joined by Assembly co-authors Sally Lieber, D-Mountain View, who called the death penalty "quite infected with racism," and Mark Leno, D- San Francisco, chair of the Assembly Judiciary Committee, who called it an ineffective "lethal lottery" riddled with "significant racial bias." Assemblyman Mervyn Dymally, D-Compton (Los Angeles County), also attended.

The legislators' bid comes amid a climate of continuing scrutiny of states' implementation of capital punishment. In 2000, Illinois Gov. George Ryan imposed a moratorium on executions after several men on Death Row were ultimately found to be not guilty; he commuted sentences three years later.

Also, on Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court weighed in on the issue of racially biased jury selection in a case that experts say will probably also invite a review of some death penalty appeals in California.

Koretz's announcement comes before the Senate-appointed 14-member panel to review the death penalty has met or secured funding to do so, according to members interviewed Tuesday.

Even the scope of the panel has yet to be fully determined, said John Moulds, a retired federal magistrate who heads the group. "That's one of the reasons for sitting down and having an organizational meeting" that has yet to occur, he said.

The Senate resolution that created the commission stipulated that it be funded by outside sources. Moulds said he was not involved in fund-raising for the commission and declined to release his own estimate of how much money the group needs to operate.

But "if we don't see some money, it will be easy to issue a final report very quickly," he quipped.

San Mateo County District Attorney Jim Fox, a member of the commission, said he expected a meeting to be held in July or August. But Fox -- whose office prosecuted Donald Beardsley, the last person to receive the death penalty in California -- said he does not believe a moratorium on executions is needed while his group works.

"I don't think people could claim that California is on a fast track in its application or administration of the death penalty," Fox said. "The cases should be looked at individually."

Victims rights advocates were displeased to learn of Koretz's forthcoming bill.

"If you have a death penalty, you should use it," said Marcella Leach, president of Justice for Homicide Victims. "Get rid of it or start executing people, because it means nothing."

Typically, new bills are not introduced near the beginning of summer -- a time dominated by budget negotiations -- let alone one that is not expected to move through the legislative hearing process until 2006.

But Koretz spokeswoman Teresa Stark said the assemblyman "wanted the lead time to get the bill out there and get people talking about it."

She and others said they did not know where the funding for the commission would come from. But Koretz said he did not feel it would impact the committee's work.

"I don't think it's going to skew the results," he said.

E-mail John M. Hubbell at jhubbell [at] sfchronicle.com .

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©2005 San Francisco Chronicle

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Stefanie L. Faucher
Program Director

Death Penalty Focus
870 Market St. Ste. 859
San Francisco, CA 94102
Tel. 415-243-0143
Fax 415-243-0994
stefanie [at] deathpenalty.org
http://www.deathpenalty.org
http://www.californiamoratorium.org