Justice or vengeance? Kern prosecutor, public defender on the future of death penalty in California

A recent California Supreme Court ruling could lead to executions resuming in months, and the county's top prosecutor and a high-ranking public defender spoke this week about whether the decision will in fact speed up the death penalty process and what benefits, if any, that will have.

The ruling, filed Aug. 24, upholds much of Proposition 66, passed by voters last year to speed up death penalty appeals. The decision becomes final 30 days after it has been filed.

According to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, there are currently 746 inmates on death row, 27 from Kern County. The number has increased steadily since 1978.

But with the court's ruling, Kern County District Attorney Lisa Green said, executions could resume in six to nine months. She said there are 17 cases in California — none from Kern County — where condemned inmates have exhausted their appeals.

She said it's her understanding that "very soon" dates will be set for judges to start scheduling executions.

Speeding up the process, Green said, is important for the families of victims who continue to suffer as first years then decades pass without them receiving the justice they expected. She said she's been in touch with some of the next of kin in death penalty cases, and seen firsthand their frustration.

Green said she read an email by Marc Klaas, father of murder victim Polly Klaas, whose killing played a role in politicians passing California's "three strikes" law, about the relief he felt when Proposition 66 passed.

"The emotion was really raw in the email, and well over 20 years have passed since his daughter was killed," Green said. "People whose loved ones have been killed are grateful there are people to take up the cause."

In its ruling, the court found Proposition 66's five-year deadline for direct appeals — automatic appeals given to everyone sentenced to death — to be advisory, not mandatory. Green, however, said she doesn't think five years is too fast for a direct appeal.

"Obviously, that's a lifetime if you consider the victims' families and what they've had to go through," she said.

She stressed the process would not be expedited to the point where issues couldn't be litigated or defendants' rights are violated, but it would stop the "feet-dragging" on the part of attorneys who continually want to delay the process.

And after direct appeals, there are other appeals that can be filed. It's not the end of the process.

As an example for the need of an expedited process, Green used Vincent Brothers, the notorious Kern County killer who murdered five family members, to illustrate her point.

Sentenced to death in 2007, the responsive brief in Brothers' direct appeal was completed just this year, and a ruling will likely be issued next year. That would mean 11 years will have passed for his direct appeal to be heard.

"That's too long, and so that was one of the moving forces captured by the initiative," Green said.

But Dominic Eyherabide, the county's chief assistant public defender, said that while Proposition 66's intent was to streamline the system, what it will do is actually create more agencies and bureaucracies.

"Since when do you solve a government bureaucracy problem by creating more bureaucracy?" he said. "They've just introduced more levels of review."

Eyherabide said people can legislate something, but it doesn't mean it's going to be translated into an effective or workable system.

He cited Associate Justice Goodwin Liu's concurring opinion on the ruling.

Liu wrote, in part, "The realities of California’s postconviction death penalty process mean that without a radical reorganization of this court’s functions, a restructuring of the role of lower courts beyond what Proposition 66 provides, and a significant infusion of resources from the Legislature, the five-year time limit is not remotely close to realistic."

Given the way the system works, Eyherabide said, the writ attorney will have a year, maybe two, to review the entire case and all documentation in preparing a petition within the Proposition 66 timeline.

The only way to accomplish that would be to pay writ attorneys so well that each can work just on one case for the entire year, Eyherabide said.

The ruling will also put more work on trial judges, Eyherabide said, noting the court upheld the mandate that trial courts can hear some appeals in connection with inmates over whose trials they presided.

He said if there's a positive to the ruling, it's that maybe there will be more talking and brainstorming between public defenders and writ attorneys.

But he said the ruling initiates a likely complicated and costly process that does nothing to protect the general public since anyone sitting on death row isn't going anywhere.

"This is about vengeance," Eyherabide said. "So we're going to spend millions and millions to implement this just for that."

Source: bakersfield.com, Jason Kotowski, September 4, 2017

⚑ | Report an error, an omission, a typo; suggest a story or a new angle to an existing story; submit a piece, a comment; recommend a resource; contact the webmaster, contact us: deathpenaltynews@gmail.com.

Opposed to Capital Punishment? Help us keep this blog up and running! DONATE!

"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde

• Share
• Tweet
• Share
• Pin
• Share