[Deathpenalty] [SPAM] death penalty news----USA, CALIF., CONN.

[Rick Halperin]

April 25



USA:

Shifts detected in support for death penalty


The campaign to abolish the death penalty has been freshly invigorated this 
month in a series of actions that supporters say represents increasing evidence 
that America may be losing its taste for capital punishment.

Connecticut religious leaders who oppose the death penalty stop for a prayer 
during a march to the state Capitol in Hartford on April 3.

Sponsored LinksAs early as this week, Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy, a 
Democrat, is poised to sign a bill repealing the death penalty in that state. A 
separate proposal has qualified for the November ballot in California that 
would shut down the largest death row in the country and convert inmates' 
sentences to life without parole.

Academics, too, have recently taken indirect aim: The National Research Council 
concluded last week that there have been no reliable studies to show that 
capital punishment is a deterrent to homicide.

That study, which does not take a position on capital punishment, follows a 
Gallup Poll last fall found support for the death penalty had slipped to 61% 
nationally, the lowest level in 39 years.

Even in Texas, which has long projected the harshest face of the U.S. criminal 
justice system, there has been a marked shift. Last year, the state's 13 
executions marked the lowest number in 15 years. And this year, the state — the 
perennial national leader in executions — is scheduled to carry out 10.

Capital punishment proponents say the general decline in death sentences and 
executions in recent years is merely a reflection of the sustained drop in 
violent crime, but some lawmakers and legal analysts say the numbers underscore 
a growing wariness of wrongful convictions.

In Texas, Dallas County alone has uncovered 30 wrongful convictions since 2001, 
the most of any county in the country. Former Texas governor Mark White, a 
Democrat, said he continues to support the death penalty "only in a select 
number of cases," yet he says he believes that a "national reassessment" is now 
warranted given the stream of recent exonerations.

"I have been a proponent of the death penalty, but convicting people who didn't 
commit the crime has to stop," White said.

Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy is expected to sign a bill repealing the death 
penalty in the state soon.

"There is an inherent unfairness in the system," said Former Los Angeles County 
district attorney Gil Garcetti, a Democrat. He added that he was "especially 
troubled" by mounting numbers of wrongful convictions.

A recent convert to the California anti-death-penalty campaign, Garcetti said 
the current system has become "obscenely expensive" and forces victims to often 
wait years for death row appeals to run their course. In the past 34 years in 
California, just 13 people have been executed as part of a system that costs 
$184 million per year to maintain.

"Replacing capital punishment will give victims legal finality," Garcetti said.

Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center 
which opposes capital punishment, said California's referendum marks a 
potentially "historic" moment in the anti-death-penalty movement in a state 
where 22% of nation's death row prisoners are housed.

"Repeal in California would be a huge developement," Dieter said. "Just getting 
it on the ballot is big."

Nationally, Dieter said, fading arguments for capital punishment as a deterrent 
to homicide and mounting numbers of wrongful convictions are "turning a corner" 
in the debate.

Democratic state Rep. Gary Holder-Winfield, a sponsor of the bill to repeal 
Connecticut's death penalty, said capital punishment's "promise to victims and 
taxpayers is hollow." In Connecticut, only one person has been executed in the 
past 52 years.

Scott Burns, executive director of the National District Attorneys Association, 
said the country's system of capital punishment is in need of change, but not 
elimination. He said there is "strong motivation," though, to fix a system that 
can take 20 years for offenders to reach the death chamber following 
conviction.

"The vast majority of states (33, not counting Connecticut) still have the 
possibility of the death penalty," Burns said.

"I don't see a blowing wind that will dramatically change that," he added.

(source: USA Today)






CALIFORNIA:

District attorneys protest measure that would end death penalty


San Bernardino County District Attorney Michael Ramos was among fellow top 
prosecutors at the steps of the state Capitol on Tuesday voicing their 
opposition to a measure that aims to abolish California's death penalty.

The California District Attorneys Association, of which Ramos is past 
president, is opposed to the SAFE California Act, a November ballot measure 
that would replace the death penalty with the punishment of life in prison 
without parole.

The measure to abolish the death penalty official qualified for the November 
ballot on Monday.

If voters approve, 725 death row inmates would have their sentences converted 
to the new punishment, which would be the harshest that prosecutors could seek.

In Sacramento, Ramos marched with fellow district attorneys and victims' family 
members in support of Crime Victims Week, which began on Monday. Opponents say 
the measure removes justice for victims of death row prisoners.

"It's a horrible idea and I think (supporters of the measure) are manipulating 
the facts," Ramos said.

"Nobody sitting on California's death row has ever been proven innocent. These 
people brutally and horrifically murdered citizens of our county. We are 
careful about who we select for the death penalty and we don't make these 
decisions lightly ... I can tell you that the people sitting on death row are 
not only guilty, but they deserve the ultimate punishment."

Supporters of the ballot measure say abolishing the death penalty will save the 
state millions of dollars through layoffs of prosecutors and defense attorneys 
who handle death penalty cases.

"Our system is broken, expensive and it always will carry the grave risk of a 
mistake," said Jeanne Woodford, the former warden of San Quentin who is now an 
anti-death penalty advocate and an official supporter of the measure.

If the death penalty were to end, it would affect Inland Empire cases.

In 1986, Redlands was rocked when Corrina Novis, then 20, was murdered after 
she was abducted near the Redlands Mall on Nov. 7.

Her body was found in a shallow grave in Fontana. Her killers, James Marlow and 
Cynthia Coffman are now on Death Row - Marlow at San Quentin State Prison and 
Coffman at Central California Women's Facility.

Novis, a then-insurance clerk at State Farm, had stopped at Cho's Liquors at 
the corner of Colton Avenue and Orange Street before she was supposed to meet 
with friends at Gay 90s Pizza Parlor.

Police said Marlow abducted Novis outside of the front entrance of the mall and 
forced her at gunpoint to withdraw money from her checking account.

Marlow and Coffman then took Novis to a Fontana home where the 2 used coercion 
then sodomy to obtain her bank card number.

The pair then took Novis to a vineyard in Fontana when they strangled her 
before burying her alive.

Days later, the pair robbed and murdered Lynel Murrary, 19, in Huntington Beach 
on Nov. 12, 1986.

The 2 were tried in 1987 together with separate attorneys present.

2 years later, Coffman and Marlow were convicted of 1st-degree murder, 
kidnapping for robbery, burglary and sodomy and sentenced to death.

Chino Hills resident Mary Ann Hughes, the mother of a young murder victim, 
hopes the measure fails.

"Some people commit such evil crimes, such as the person who killed my son, 
that the only way people can be free of people like that is through the death 
penalty," Hughes said.

"That was the sentence they gave him, and for it to be changed now doesn't do 
justice to my son or to any of the other victims out there."

Death row inmate Kevin Cooper was convicted in 1985 for the June 4, 1983, 
murders of Hughes, Douglas and Peggy Ryen and their 10-year-old daughter, 
Jessica. They were brutally slain with a hatchet and knife in the Ryens' home 
in Chino Hills. An execution date has yet to be set for Cooper or any other 
current California death row inmates because of concerns that the state's 
lethal injection method is inhumane, said John Kochis, current lead prosecutor 
on the Kevin Cooper case and chief deputy district attorney for San Bernardino 
County.

"The reason that the death penalty is appropriate in Cooper's case is he did 
terrible things to an innocent family that didn't deserve to die, let alone die 
the way they died," Kochis said. "His conduct was so terrible that the 
appropriate punishment for his conduct is the death penalty."

Since California reinstated the death penalty in 1978, the state has executed 
13 inmates. A 2009 study conducted by a senior federal judge and law school 
professor concluded that the state was spending about $184 million a year to 
maintain its death row and the death penalty system.

The "Savings, Accountability, and Full Enforcement for California Act" is the 
5th measure to qualify for the November ballot, the secretary of state 
announced Monday. Supporters collected more than the 504,760 valid signatures 
needed to place the measure on the ballot.

If the measure passes, $100 million in purported savings from abolishing the 
death penalty would be used over three years to investigate unsolved murders 
and rapes.

(source: San Bernardino Sun)

*********************

Death penalty takes on life of its own


It's a powerful commentary on his own career that the man who wrote 
California's death penalty law is now working hard to abolish it.

"In retrospect, it was the worst thing I've ever done in my career," said 
Donald Heller, a noted criminal defense lawyer, former federal prosecutor and 
the author of a 1978 death penalty initiative that put California back in the 
execution business.

With a death penalty repeal headed for the November ballot, Heller – a 
Sacramento lawyer – will be a notable player in the death penalty debate. We 
need jobs in California, but we'll get six months of emotion over capital 
punishment instead.

It will be all-death-all-the-time in the public discourse, especially as 
November draws near and passions become inflamed in a campaign whose key 
players, like Heller, are mostly from Sacramento. A lot of good people will be 
devoting serious energy to discussing the fate of bad people. Some regions do 
industry. Sacramento does laws and controversy. We dwell in discord every 
election season, but this one is going to be different.

Who knows if California will repeal its death penalty law, but this prediction 
seems safe:

Nothing good will come of this campaign.

Prosecutors such as Sacramento County District Attorney Jan Scully have 
justifiable reasons for wanting to keep the death penalty in some cases.

Some killers are more heinous than others.

I covered such a case in 1996, when an adorable 8-year-old boy from Yuba City 
named Michael Lyons was kidnapped, tortured and murdered by Robert Boyd 
Rhoades.

Some details of this case are simply unspeakable.

Rhoades is on death row for killing Michael Lyons. His mother spoke at 
Tuesday's rally for crime victims at the Capitol. Heller says he is not 
standing up for Rhoades or many of the other 700 or so inmates on death row in 
California.

Instead, those who seek to stop executions are arguing for cost savings. They 
say California wastes $137 million a year on appeals in death penalty cases.

Heller said he was also horrified to see too many death penalty cases where the 
defendants had substandard lawyers arguing their cases.

Poverty was a factor in the lives of too many death row killers, as was the 
overrepresentation of African American and Latino defendants.

"It certainly causes people of intelligence to wonder about the possibility of 
executing an innocent person," Heller said.

These arguments make sense and are especially poignant coming from the contrite 
man who feels remorse that his legal acumen made the penalty possible again in 
California.

But this is also why we may dread the next six months. If you agree with 
Heller, you disagree with the mother of Michael Lyons.

What a choice.

(source: Marcos Breton, Sacramento Bee)

****************

Death penalty foes oppose plea bargains for killers


The SAFE folks, who are pushing a ballot measure to end California’s death 
penalty, had a conference call yesterday in which former L.A. D.A.s Gil 
Garcetti and John Van de Kamp participated.

During the question period, I asked the former prosecutors what they thought 
the effect would be of eliminating the death penalty as leverage to attain plea 
bargains with murderers.

Garcetti railed that using the death penalty to win a plea bargain would be “an 
unethical thing to do,” and L.A. would never do it. Van de Kamp agreed: “That 
is extortion,” he intoned, and “totally unethical.” (Yes, this is the same Van 
de Kamp who did not want to try Hillside Strangler Angelo Bueno, citing 
insufficient evidence to try.) The implication, a reporter who heard their 
answer later told me, was that iI watched too much TV.

Death penalty foes also against plea bargains

Today I chatted with the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation’s Michael Rushford 
who rattled off some information plea bargains which prosecutors made with 
murderers.

John Gardner, a 31-year-old sex offender convicted of killing two teenage girls 
in San Diego County, was given three consecutive life sentences without parole 
after his victims’ families confronted him in court for his crimes. ABC 
reports: Gardner reached a plea deal last month that spared him a possible 
death penalty. He admitted to the rape and murders of Amber Dubois, 14, and 
17-year-old Chelsea King.

According to an anti-death penalty web site, the Department of Justice, 210 of 
411 federal defendants facing capital murder charges “avoided trial by 
negotiated plea when the government dropped its request for the death penalty 
without a plea agreement, dismissed charges entirely or the judge barred the 
death penalty.”

Facing 48 counts of aggravated murder, Green River Killer Gary Leon Ridgway cut 
a plea bargain that spared him the death penalty in 2003. To Garcetti and Van 
de Kamp, this deal may be tainted and unethical, but it put away Ridgway for 
life while saving taxpayers money and doing away with any risk of acquittal.

Here’s a CJLF paper that reports, ”The average county with the death penalty 
disposes of 18.9 percent of of murder cases with a plea and a long sentence, 
compared to 5.0 percent in counties without the death penalty.”

“When you plead out,” Rushford added, there are ”no trial, no appeals, no 
habeas corpus. There’s no 5 years waiting for an appeals attorney.” Think about 
that the next time you hear the eliminating the death penalty will save money.

(source: San Francisco Chronicle)

*****************

Crime victims assail death penalty repeal initiative


The newly minted ballot measure to repeal the death penalty came under attack 
at the Capitol on Tuesday, as law enforcement and crime victims groups assailed 
the initiative as an assault on the public.

Gov. Jerry Brown, who opposes capital punishment but has enforced it while in 
office, said he is happy that the repeal will be on the ballot in November.

"Just like I think it's a good thing that people get a chance to vote on 
taxes," Brown said earlier Tuesday in San Jose. "Death and taxes are things we 
can't avoid, so it's good that people get to weigh in occasionally."

A few hours later, speakers at a Crime Victims United rally on the Capitol's 
west steps took turns blasting the initiative.

"Don't let people tell you life without parole is just as good as the death 
penalty," said Nina Salarno Ashford, who sits on the board of the nonprofit 
victims advocacy group.

Assemblyman Jim Nielsen, R-Gerber, declared, "This initiative spits in the eye 
of justice. We must defeat it."

It was red meat for the rally, which assembles every year to remember murdered 
friends and family and press for victims' rights.

The group had invited Brown to speak, even though he vetoed a bill to restore 
California's death penalty during his inaugural term in 1977. The Legislature 
overrode the veto.

As attorney general, Brown backed capital punishment cases. During his 2010 
campaign, he promised to uphold the law. That won't change, he promised the 
victims rights group.

"I will carry out the law," he said, "without fear or failure and with fidelity 
to the will of the people."

Crime Victims United, backed by the California Correctional Peace Officers 
Association, also opposes a program Brown launched in October that is shrinking 
the state's prison population by sentencing more convicts to local jails. The 
group contends the policy merely shifts overcrowding and costs from the state 
to local governments, which are more likely to release prisoners early – and 
put the public at risk.

Brown wants to put a tax measure on the November ballot that would guarantee 
money for local jails.

The governor didn't take on the critics directly. Instead, he called for the 
hundreds assembled at the event to take a wider view. Administrations come and 
go, Brown said, leaving thousands of laws intended to curb crime on the books. 
Still, violent crime remains.

"It is not our lot to totally overcome evil," the governor said in one of 
several biblically flavored references in his 5-minute speech, "but to not be 
overcome by it."

(source: Sacramento Bee)

******************

California Death Penalty Ban: Residents To Vote On Controversial Ban In 
November


A measure to abolish California's death penalty qualified for the November 
ballot on Monday.

If it passes, the 725 California inmates now on Death Row will have their 
sentences converted to life in prison without the possibility of parole. It 
would also make life without parole the harshest penalty prosecutors can seek.

Backers of the measure say abolishing the death penalty will save the state 
millions of dollars through layoffs of prosecutors and defense attorneys who 
handle death penalty cases, as well as savings from not having to maintain the 
nation's largest death row at San Quentin prison.

Those savings, supporters argue, can be used to help unsolved crimes. If the 
measure passes, $100 million in purported savings from abolishing the death 
penalty would be used over three years to investigate unsolved murders and 
rapes.

The measure is dubbed the "Savings, Accountability, and Full Enforcement for 
California Act," also known as the SAFE California Act. It's the 5th measure to 
qualify for the November ballot, the California secretary of state announced 
Monday. Supporters collected more than the 504,760 valid signatures needed to 
place the measure on the ballot.

"Our system is broken, expensive and it always will carry the grave risk of a 
mistake," said Jeanne Woodford, the former warden of San Quentin who is now an 
anti-death penalty advocate and an official supporter of the measure.

The measure will also require most inmates sentenced to life without parole to 
find jobs within prisons. Most death row inmates do not hold prison jobs for 
security reasons.

Though California is one of 35 states that authorize the death penalty, the 
state hasn't put anyone to death since 2006. A federal judge that year halted 
executions until prison officials built a new death chamber at San Quentin 
Prison, developed new lethal injection protocols and made other improvements to 
delivering the lethal three-drug combination.

A separate state lawsuit is challenging the way the California Department of 
Corrections and Rehabilitation developed the new protocols. A judge in Marin 
County earlier this year ordered the CDCR to redraft its lethal injection 
protocols, further delaying executions.

Since California reinstated the death penalty in 1978, the state has executed 
13 inmates. A 2009 study conducted by a senior federal judge and law school 
professor concluded that the state was spending about $184 million a year to 
maintain death row and the death penalty system.

Supporters of the proposition, such as the American Civil Liberties Union, are 
portraying it as a cost-savings measure in a time of political austerity. They 
count several prominent conservatives and prosecutors – including the author of 
the 1978 measure adopting the death penalty – as supporters and argue that too 
few executions have been carried out at too great a cost.

"My conclusion is that he law is totally ineffective," said Gil Garcetti, a 
former Los Angeles county district attorney. "Most inmates are going to die of 
natural causes, not executions."

Garcetti, who served as district attorney from 1992 to 2000, said he changed 
his mind after publication of the 2009 study, which was published by Judge 
Arthur Alarcon of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and law professor Paula 
Mitchell.

Opponents of the measure, such as former Sacramento U.S Attorney McGregor 
Scott, argue that lawyers filing "frivolous appeals" are the problem, not the 
death penalty law.

"On behalf of crime victims and their loved ones who have suffered at the hands 
of California's most violent criminals, we are disappointed that the ACLU and 
their allies would seek to score political points in their continued efforts to 
override the will of the people and repeal the death penalty," said Scott, who 
is chairman of the Californians for Justice and Public Safety, a coalition of 
law enforcement officials, crime victims and others formed to oppose the 
measure.

The Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, meanwhile, remains one the biggest 
backers of the death penalty in the state and opposes the latest attempt to 
abolish it in California. The foundation and its supports argue that federal 
judges are gumming up the process with endless delays and reversals of state 
Supreme Court rulings upholding individual death sentences.

The foundation on Thursday filed a lawsuit seeking the immediate resumption of 
executions in California. The foundation's lawsuit, filed directly with the 
state Court of Appeal, argues that since the three-drug method has been the 
subject of so much litigation – and the source of the execution delays – a 
one-drug method of lethal injection like Ohio uses can be substituted 
immediately.

(source: Paul Elias, Huffingtno Post)






CONNECTICUT:

Poll: Conn. voters oppose death penalty repeal


A new poll shows a majority of Connecticut voters disapprove of how the General 
Assembly has handled the death penalty, voting to abolish capital punishment 
for future crimes.

The survey, released Wednesday by Quinnipiac University, shows 51 % of 
registered voters disapprove of the legislature's handling of the issue, 
compared to 29 % who approve.

The same poll shows 62 % of voters favor the death penalty for those convicted 
of murder. However, they are evenly split when asked whether they prefer 
punishing murderers with the death penalty or life in prison with no chance of 
parole.

Gov. Dannel P. Malloy is expected to soon sign the repeal legislation into law.

The survey of 1,745 voters has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2.4 
% points.

(source: The Register-Mail)