[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----FLA., NEB., CALIF.

[Rick Halperin]

Oct. 26



FLORDIA:

Pinellas judge rules death penalty case of ex-Jabil executive can move forward


Patrick Evans, the former Jabil executive accused of killing his wife and her 
friend in 2008, finally learned Tuesday how his fate will be decided when his 
retrial starts next week.

The jurors will be told that - if they convict him of the 2 murders - all 12 of 
them must then vote unanimously to send Evans to death row. If not, he'll end 
up with a sentence of life in prison.

Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Judge Joseph Bulone said Tuesday that modifying jury 
instructions was the "most viable option" in a case muddled by uncertainty 
after the Florida Supreme Court ruled Oct. 14 that only unanimous juries can 
sentence defendants to death.

But the defense disagreed, then sprang another option on the court: They could 
refuse to participate in jury selection under the judge's rules.

Assistant Public Defender John Swisher, who is also on Evans' defense team, 
said the court is relying on the assumption that the Florida Legislature will 
follow the state Supreme Court???s opinion when it rewrites the law next year.

That did not sit well with the judge.

"I would really think very seriously about not doing your job," Bulone told 
him. "If you don't participate, quite frankly, I think that's pretty 
outrageous."

The other options Bulone offered last week included having the same jury come 
back next year for the penalty phase, after the Legislature has rewritten the 
death penalty law; or picking 2 separate juries, 1 for the trial and the other 
to decide the penalty phase next year.

Assistant State Attorney Tom Koskinas said rewriting the jury instructions to 
conform with the state Supreme Court???s ruling was the best choice.

'I just don't see the prejudice or detriment if we do it now," he said.

Assistant Public Defender Allison Miller disagreed.

"Our position is there is no lawful way in which the death penalty can be 
imposed on Mr. Evans currently," she said.

In the end, the judge sided with the state and explained his rationale, which 
is in part based on the state Supreme Court's ruling that death row inmate 
Timothy Lee Hurst, who was sentenced to death for a 1998 murder in Pensacola, 
should receive a new penalty phase "consistent with this opinion."

In January, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the old way Florida condemned 
defendants to die - by juries recommending a death sentence and judges imposing 
it - was unconstitutional. In response, legislators in March passed a new law 
requiring a 10-2 jury vote to impose death.

But this month the Florida Supreme Court scuttled that law, ruling that 
"Florida need not face a similar crisis in the future." Bulone said he 
interpreted that to mean the statute may not have to be amended.

The defendant was once married to Elizabeth Evans, a sales director. She later 
filed for divorce. On Dec. 20, 2008, she went on a date with a co-worker, 
Gerald Taylor. Later that day, authorities said, Evans confronted them inside 
her Gulfport condo, part of which was captured in a recorded call to 911.

Evans is accused of fatally shooting Elizabeth Evans, 44, and Taylor, 43.

He was arrested, then convicted of 2 counts of 1st-degree murder. In 2012, 
Evans was sentenced to death. But in November, the Florida Supreme Court 
overturned his death sentence, citing errors in a detective's testimony and 
criticizing a prosecutor's remarks. His retrial is scheduled to start Monday.

(source: Tampa Bay Times)






NEBRASKA:

Anti-death penalty group outlines human costs of Nebraska's capital punishment


As the clock ticks down on Nebraska voters' decision on whether to retain the 
Legislature's decision to repeal the death penalty, the anti-death penalty 
campaign on Tuesday zeroed in on wrongful murder convictions.

Retain A Just Nebraska, the organization that wants voters to replace the death 
penalty with life in prison for 1st-degree murder convictions, held a morning 
news conference Tuesday with a member of the wrongfully convicted Beatrice 6.

Ada JoAnn Taylor and attorneys Jeff Patterson, Bob Bartle and Herb Friedman, 
who represented 5 of the the Beatrice 6, talked to reporters about the human 
cost of the death penalty.

Taylor and 5 others spent a collective 70 years in prison for the 1985 murder 
and rape of Helen Wilson of Beatrice before they were exonerated by DNA 
evidence i 2008. 1 of the 6, Joseph White, died on the job at an Alabama steel 
mill in 2011.

Taylor's son was 14 months old when she was taken away in the middle of the 
night after a cold-case investigation led to her arrest in 1989. She didn't see 
him again until 10 months ago. And she has never seen her grandchildren.

In a federal civil rights trial in June, jurors heard evidence of what caused 
the wrongful convictions -- and about everything they lost when they were sent 
to prison, Patterson said.

"This evidence led a jury to award our clients over $28.1 million," he said. 
"It was compensation to right a wrong of the worst miscarriage of justice in 
Nebraska history."

The productive years from age 25 to 45, when many people start careers, get 
married, watch children grow, were stolen from Taylor and co-defendant Tom 
Winslow when they were convicted of 2nd-degree murder and from White, who was 
sentenced to life for 1st-degree murder.

"Money cannot possibly make up for the human cost of a wrongful conviction," 
Patterson said.

Taylor, Winslow and 3 others -- Debra Shelden, Kathy Gonzalez and James Dean -- 
entered pleas in the case. White pleaded not guilty and was convicted after a 
trial.

"The threat of the death penalty was terrifying and overwhelming," Taylor said 
Tuesday. "I came to believe that I must have been guilty even though I had 
nothing to do with Mrs. Wilson's murder."

Taylor, who spent 19 years, 7 months and 26 days locked up, told her story for 
TV and online ads. At the news conference, she said she was told nearly every 
day she was in the Gage County jail that she would be the first woman on death 
row unless she pleaded guilty.

She had a mental illness, borderline personality disorder, she said, and she 
began having dreams and visions at the time that she was involved in a crime 
she knew nothing about. Ultimately, she developed a delusion that she was the 
one who suffocated Helen Wilson.

In fact, said Patterson, some of those delusions are still present.

With enough pressure, he said, everybody has a breaking point. The county 
attorney and the Gage County sheriff knew Taylor was at risk for psychotic 
lapses when under stress, he said.

Dean, who was sentenced to 10 years for aiding and abetting second-degree 
murder and released after serving about five, insisted at the time that he was 
innocent, the attorneys said Tuesday. But he was so nervous and distraught -- 
and having anxiety attacks because of the threat of the death penalty -- that a 
reserve sheriff's deputy who was also a psychologist was brought in to counsel 
him.

The deputy told Dean he was repressing his memory, and if he just relaxed, his 
recollection of what happened in Wilson's home would come back to him in 
dreams, Patterson said.

"Almost immediately, James started having dreams about a murder he knew nothing 
about," he said Tuesday.

Gonzalez and Winslow also knew they weren't guilty, but they entered guilty 
pleas in the case, Patterson said.

"Threatening suspects with execution may resolve cases, but is it the kind of 
resolution we can afford?" he asked.

Taylor is 53 now, and said she is speaking out for those who don't have a 
voice. She is still trying to reconnect with family members with whom she lost 
contact.

"Just trying to be a typical, normal housewife, per se," Taylor said.

Despite her exoneration, some people continue to believe she and the others are 
guilty, she said. "It's hard."

The 5 living people who were convicted of killing Wilson felt they were being 
tried again during the federal trial accusing Gage County, Deputy Sheriff 
Burdette Searcey and Reserve Deputy Wayne Price of violating their civil 
rights, Patterson said.

"All of them felt the trial exonerated them from Mrs. Wilson's murder, as much 
as it did convict the Gage County authorities for what they did," he said.

(source: Lincoln Journal Star)

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

Tour speakers include Ohio man formerly on death row


During the 20 years he spent on death row, Joe D'Ambrosio became filled with 
despair as he lost one appeal after another.

D'Ambrosio was innocent. It started to look as though he would be executed for 
something he didn't do, and no one was paying attention to him.

"Once you're convicted, no one listens to the man in the orange jumpsuit," 
D'Ambrosio said. "No one listens to the dead man walking. They all say they 
didn't do it."

The Ohio man was eventually exonerated, but he now spends much of his time 
speaking against the death penalty. The only purpose of capital punishment is 
to keep society safe from the criminals who've been convicted, he said. Life 
without parole serves the same purpose. Those people will never see the outside 
of prison.

"When you leave, you leave in a pine box," he said.

If authorities find out later that someone serving a life sentence was 
innocent, they can release him, D'Ambrosio said.

D'Ambrosio was one of several people who spoke on Tuesday night at St. Mary's 
Cathedral at a gathering presented by the Nebraska Catholic Conference. The 
speaking tour also visited Omaha on Monday and will conclude today in Lincoln.

Nebraska's 3 Catholic dioceses organized the tour to help persuade the state's 
voters to uphold the abolition of the death penalty on Nov. 8.

D'Ambrosio, who lives in North Ridgeville, Ohio, was 26 when he went to prison, 
sentenced to death for the 1988 murder of Tony Klann of Cleveland. 
Prosecutorial misconduct led to his conviction.

Defenders of the death penalty say it's a deterrent to crime. D'Ambrosio, who 
got to know a lot of criminals, says it is not.

"Actually, most of the guys that are on 'The Row' would rather be executed than 
put in prison for the rest of their lives," he said in an interview. People 
serving a life sentence always have to worry and look over their shoulder. The 
next guy sentenced to prison might be a friend or relative of the person the 
inmate killed.

D'Ambrosio, who will turn 55 on Dec. 1, was released from prison in 2010 thanks 
to the efforts of the Rev. Neil Kookoothe, who is also on the Nebraska speaking 
tour.

Kookoothe, who is a lawyer and nurse as well as a Catholic priest, said the 
death penalty does not prevent crime.

He said many people who commit violent acts are under the influence of alcohol 
or drugs or are consumed with rage. People in that condition are not going to 
stop and ask themselves if they'll get the death penalty before they take 
action, Kookoothe said. No government, especially "a democracy as great as 
ours," should be in the business of taking people's lives, said Kookoothe, who 
works at a parish in North Olmsted, Ohio.

Kookoothe said he can counter any pro-death-penalty argument except the one 
that cares only about vengeance. People who seek capital punishment simply out 
of revenge should admit it, he said. But we, as a people, should not be killing 
criminals for that reason, Kookoothe said.

Another person on the speaking tour is Marietta Jaeger-Lane, whose 7-year-old 
daughter, Susie, was kidnapped from a Montana campground and killed in 1973.

Executing a person solves nothing, Jaeger-Lane said. All it does is make 
another victim and victimize the killer's family. By killing people, a 
government takes on the mindset that the murderer had, which "degrades and 
demeans all of us," Jaeger-Lane said.

Executions are done in our name "as citizens of the state," using our tax 
dollars, she said. People need to step up and protest if the practice violates 
their values, said the former Michigan woman, who now lives in Punta Gorda, 
Fla.

The man who killed her daughter, David Meirhofer, would not confess to that 
murder and others as long as prosecutors were seeking the death penalty, 
Jaeger-Lane said.

Exactly one year after killing her daughter, Meirhofer called Jaeger-Lane in 
the middle of the night to gloat. Jaeger-Lane, whose faith was strengthened 
after her daughter's death, told Meirhofer she was praying for him. She kept 
him on the phone for an hour and a half because he was "my only connection with 
Susie."

During the conversation, Meirhofer let his guard down and revealed enough 
information that the FBI was able to catch him.

Jaeger-Lane argued for life without parole, which was implemented by the 
Montana Legislature the year Meirhofer was sentenced.

Meirhofer committed suicide the same day as his guilty plea. Jaeger-Lane has 
since become friends with his mother.

Jaeger-Lane, who speaks all over the world, believes that life is sacred.

She regularly spends time with prisoners just to let them know that someone 
cares about them.

Most crimes are committed by people under the influence of alcohol or drugs, 
she said. When they've sobered up, "they're really very nice guys," she said.

Anti-death penalty film Sunday afternoon

What: documentary about Juan Melendez, the 24th person exonerated and released 
from Florida's death row

When: 1:30 p.m. Sunday

Where: Grand Theatre

Cost: free

(source: The Independent)

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

Anti-death penalty group wants radio ad featuring secretary of state off the 
air


An anti-death penalty group is crying foul over radio advertisements in which 
the secretary of state tries to "clarify" ballot language that will decide the 
fate of capital punishment in Nebraska.

Retain a Just Nebraska sent a letter to the Nebraska Broadcasters Association 
asking it to stop running a pair of public service announcements produced by 
Secretary of State John Gale.

Darold Bauer, campaign manager for the group, said the radio announcements fail 
to say that the Nebraska Legislature repealed the death penalty and replaced it 
with life in prison without parole. Research shows that public opinion changes 
"drastically" based on whether or not the alternative of life imprisonment 
exists, he added.

"The current ad ... is nothing more than a state sponsored political ad which 
violates the trust of the public, the intent of numerous campaign laws, and may 
be a violation of state and federal law," Bauer wrote.

Gale declined to comment Tuesday.

Jim Timm, director of the Nebraska Broadcasters Association, said the 
organization will not discontinue the ads. The scripts were written by Gale and 
carefully reviewed so as not to sway voters either way on the issue, he added.

"I approved them to make sure they are not steering people to vote one way or 
the other," Timm said Tuesday. "They are trying to inform and educate as to 
what will be on the ballot."

Timm pointed out that the public service ads are available to radio stations 
statewide to broadcast as they see fit. The $3,500 campaign does not come with 
a guarantee that the ads will air a minimum number of times.

The Legislature voted to repeal the death penalty in 2015. Supporters of 
capital punishment launched a successful petition drive to put the question to 
voters in the Nov. 8 general election.

"It's easy to get tripped up over the language," Gale said in the release. 
That's because the ballot language asks voters if they want to retain or repeal 
the legislation that abolished the death penalty.

In the ads, Gale explains "a vote to retain abolishes the death penalty, a vote 
to repeal preserves the death penalty." Bauer also criticized Gale's campaign 
for not including an online component that would more likely reach younger 
voters and for not including a Spanish-language version

(source: Omaha World-Herald)

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

Nebraska politicians can't agree on the death penalty - now voters get to 
decide ---- After the conservative state repealed capital punishment and the 
governor unsuccessfully tried to keep it, a bid to bring it back again will go 
to the public


When Nebraska last year became the 1st conservative state to repeal the death 
penalty in more than 40 years, change came through a vote that saw ideological 
opponents of capital punishment unite with pragmatists worried about cost and 
effectiveness.

But it was not an outcome that the state's governor, Pete Ricketts, was ready 
to accept. In a contentious tug-of-war, Ricketts vetoed a bill passed by the 
state legislature before the lawmakers overrode him by a 30 to 19 vote.

Within a few weeks, death penalty supporters gathered enough signatures to 
introduce a ballot measure. Ricketts is bankrolling that effort, to the tune of 
$300,000.

This bid to bring back capital punishment again will go to a public vote on 8 
November, as both sides escalate their spending and their rhetoric in an 
ideological battle over the penalty, even though the sparsely populated state 
of less than 2 million people rarely carries it out.

"I think a lot of people, that rubbed them the wrong way - but you know, that's 
the democratic process and now the voters get to decide," Dan Parsons, a 
spokesman for the anti-death penalty group Retain a Just Nebraska, said of the 
governor's contributions.

Retain a Just Nebraska, which Parsons says has raised $2.7m, began airing a 
television commercial this week featuring Ada JoAnn Taylor, one of the Beatrice 
6.

Taylor spent more than 19 years in prison as 1 of 6 people wrongly convicted of 
the rape and murder of a 68-year-old woman in Beatrice, Nebraska, in 1985. 
"After my arrest I was threatened with the death penalty and told I'd be the 
1st woman on death row in Nebraska nearly every day that I was in the Gage 
County jail until I agreed to plead guilty," she told a press conference on 
Tuesday.

She was taken away from her 14-month-old son and had to give him up for 
adoption. They did not meet again for 26 years. Taylor said that anxiety about 
possibly being executed caused her to become delusional: "The threat of the 
death penalty was terrifying and overwhelming, I came to believe I must have 
been guilty."

The governor has countered in a newspaper column that "checks and balances in 
Nebraska ensure that the death penalty is used sparingly and applied justly, 
and rapid advancements in DNA technology will help to ensure accuracy in future 
cases."

Ricketts' father, Joe, has also given $100,000 to Nebraskans for the Death 
Penalty, the Omaha World-Herald reported. The group did not respond to requests 
for comment. Joe Ricketts is a billionaire who founded the online broker TD 
Ameritrade. The Ricketts family owns the Chicago Cubs baseball team.

"This is an internal political fight between Governor Ricketts and the 
legislature," said Robert Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty 
Information Center. "He has staked his political prestige on overturning the 
repeal of the death penalty."

Voters in California and Oklahoma will also decide death penalty questions on 8 
November. Confusingly, the ballot language in Nebraska means that selecting 
"retain" will abolish capital punishment and "repeal" will keep it, raising the 
possibility that some votes will be cast erroneously.

Nebraska has executed three people since capital punishment was reinstated 
nationwide in 1976 and none since 1997, when Robert Williams, convicted of 
multiple murders, died in the electric chair. Its death row consists of 10 
people. Across the country, 17 people have been executed this year in 5 states, 
but the punishment is in decline - the US is on track for the fewest judicial 
killings in a year since 1991.

Parsons cited a disputed study by a Creighton University economist, which 
claims that Nebraska's death penalty costs on average an extra $14.6m annually 
compared with life without parole.

"Fiscal conservatives - whether you're Republican or Democrat - I think most 
people in Nebraska don't like wasting tax dollars," he said. Colby Coash, a 
Republican state senator, was one of the conservatives who voted for the 
repeal, calling the practice unjust.

In a speech last year he said his stance was informed by seeing the suffering 
of the sister of a murder victim who waited in vain for 30 years for her 
brother's killer to be executed. In the end, the death row inmate died of 
cancer.

Coash also recalled feeling uneasy when, as a college student in Lincoln in 
1994, he went to the state penitentiary for a late-night execution. People 
gathered outside to celebrate in what he described as a carnival-like 
atmosphere, with a band playing, people drinking beer and grilling food and a 
New Year's Eve-style clock counting down the minutes until midnight.

"You wouldn't have been able to tell the difference between what I was 
participating in at 11 o'clock at night and what you might see an hour before a 
[college] football game," he told the audience. "At midnight, everybody cheered 
... and fireworks shot off."

A report in the New York Times put the crowd at about 2,000. Harold Otey was 
executed in the same electric chair used in Nebraska's previous execution, 35 
years earlier. "Mr Otey made no final statement, but mouthed 'I love you,' to 
his 3 chosen witnesses after he was strapped into the chair,' the report said. 
"Sweat poured off his head and soaked his shirt. Minutes later, 4 2,400-volt 
jolts of electricity coursed through his body. After the 3rd jolt, smoke rose 
from his left leg."

Even if voters decide in favor of the punishment, other hurdles pose 
considerable challenges to future executions in the state.

Now committed to the lethal injection method, it is far from clear that the 
state would even be able to source suitable drugs. As BuzzFeed reported, last 
year Nebraska spent $26,700 on a feckless attempt to import drugs from a 
dubious source in India. The shipment never left the country because the drugs 
were likely illegal to import into the US and would have been seized by federal 
authorities.

"Even if the voters restore the death penalty, there's no guarantee that the 
statute is even constitutional" in the light of a US supreme court decision in 
January on the role of juries in sentencing in Florida, Dunham said. "There's a 
very significant prospect that Nebraska's death penalty statute would be 
declared unconstitutional because the ultimate sentencing decision there, the 
weighing of aggravating and mitigating circumstances, is made by a 3-judge 
panel" rather than a jury, he said.

(source: The Guardian)






CALIFORNIA:

California's death-penalty flaws can be fixed


Abolishing the death penalty and reducing sentences for depraved criminals to 
life in prison without the possibility of parole is a bad idea that needs to be 
defeated this November.

Proposition 62 is backed by Hollywood elites and billionaires who have no stake 
in the game and are working to thwart justice. They have never suffered the 
agonizing pain that victims' families experience, nor have they dealt with 
these heinous criminals on a regular basis.

Those of us who work in the criminal justice system and prosecute the worst of 
the worst offenders do so to ensure that those who were murdered as well as 
their families receive justice.

Laci Peterson's family deserves justice. As many of you may recall, Laci was 8 
months pregnant when she went missing in December 2002. Her body, along with 
her infant son's body, was discovered several months later.

It was a horrific case with all evidence leading to her husband as the killer. 
I was a prosecutor on that case. Scott Peterson was convicted and sentenced to 
death in 2005. He's sat on death row for more than a decade.

California taxpayers are still housing, feeding, clothing and providing health 
care to a man who, upon sentencing, was called "cruel, uncaring, heartless and 
callous."

Why would Californians want to continue spending millions of dollars to take 
care of people like Peterson or Lawrence Bittaker, who kidnapped, raped and 
killed 6 young women, or Cary Stayner, who fantasized about killing women since 
he was 7 years old and carried out his fantasies by viciously murdering 2 women 
and 2 teenage girls?

Proposition 62 proponents want to abolish the death penalty and instead give 
all death-row inmates life in prison "without the possibility of parole."

However, life without parole does not stop people like them from continuing to 
perpetuate crimes. We have instances in California where prisoners on death row 
have been directing murders outside prison walls through gang affiliations.

There's also the threat of these prisoners killing correctional officers or 
inmates. Under these circumstances, what sentence would death penalty-repeal 
advocates give these killers ... a 2nd sentence of life without the possibility 
of parole?

By voting No on Proposition 62 and Yes on Proposition 66, we can eliminate the 
costs associated with multiple appeals as well as eliminate the costs 
associated with living in prison for life.

California's death-penalty system is broken but can be fixed, which is exactly 
what Proposition 66 will do.

Proposition 66 was written by the most experienced legal experts on the death 
penalty. It was written to ensure due process and to balance the rights of all 
involved - defendants, victims and their families.

Proposition 66 will streamline the system to ensure criminals sentenced to 
death will not wait years simply to have an appellate attorney appointed. It 
will limit unnecessary and repetitive delays in state court to 5 years.

The measure also limits what are clearly repetitive and frivolous abuses of the 
habeas process, where the same inmate files claim after claim with only minor 
variations on previously denied claims.

While there are no innocent people on California's death row, Proposition 66 
will ensure due process by never limiting claims of actual innocence.

Proposition 66 expands the pool of qualified lawyers to deal with these cases, 
and the trial courts that know these cases best will handle the initial 
appeals.

The overall changes to the death penalty system are simple fixes that will 
reform capital punishment and fix what's broken. I urge a "no" vote on 
Proposition 62 and "yes" on Proposition 66 to ensure the worst of the worst 
killers receive the strongest sentences, while saving California taxpayers 
millions of dollars every year.

(source: Birgit Fladager is the Stanislaus County district attorney----Fresno 
Bee)

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

End the death penalty on election day


Besides the heated and dramatic contest for the White House that will pull many 
students away from their p-sets to the polls for an hour on Nov. 8, a no less 
important but certainly less publicized fight over ballot initiatives will be 
up for grabs for Californian voters. Especially consequential for the 
advancement of social justice is Proposition 62, which seeks to end the death 
penalty. Unless we are to be complicit with the systematic killing of the 
dispossessed or even merely support the codified ability for our government to 
have such a tool at its disposal, then ending capital punishment is a critical 
first step.

A foundational principle of our legal system is equal protection before the 
law. As powerless as removing the death penalty may be for the purpose of 
remedying the inequalities embedded in the system, capital punishment serves to 
empower the very apparatus that is broken. With great power comes great 
responsibility - responsibilities the American justice system is unequipped to 
handle. Exonerations are common: The Innocence Project documents that DNA 
evidence has found over 150 people innocent on death row nationwide. Yet even 
with the presence of such technology, wrongful convictions continue, encouraged 
by a system that overemphasizes the role of witness testimonies and undervalues 
the principle of proving guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. It is also impossible 
to ignore the demographics of exonerees: Joint data from the Innocence Project 
and the NAACP finds that 70 % are people of color, with 73 % of those being 
African-American. It is no accident that the complicated, multi-layered legal 
system filters out the accused who are affluent and white while leaving 
low-income minorities to a predestined fate.

Admittedly, California has not executed a convict for 10 years, but if 
anything, this should be more of a reason to definitively put an end to the 
practice. In fact, since 1978, despite the 743 inmates on the state's death 
row, only 13 inmates have been executed. These prisoners live in a murky 
in-between state, where they must await their legal sentence despite the 
state's limited will to carry it out. Yet Prop 66, a ballot initiative aimed at 
shortening the time allowed for legal appeals, would only exacerbate the 
inaccuracies and injustices of the criminal sentencing. Additionally, at a 
whopping cost of $384 million per execution, the death penalty is 18 times more 
costly than life in prison without parole - the sentence that would replace the 
death penalty under Prop 62.

For the legions of voters who have become disillusioned this election cycle by 
???establishment??? candidates and the perception of voter inefficacy, the 
California ballot initiatives present a real opportunity to affect direct 
change on a very specific issue. A vote to end the death penalty is not enough 
and perhaps in some ways counterproductive if it serves to make us complacent, 
with the most cruel and unusual manifestation of a network of subtler 
injustices gone. Nonetheless, it is equally likely to be the next step in a 
continuing and productive discussion in the United States about mass 
incarceration and institutional inequalities. There is reason beyond blind 
optimism to believe this will occur. Citing Proposition 34 from 2012, Bryan 
Stevenson, author of bestselling novel "Just Mercy," opines that at the time, 
"the ballot initiative lost by only a couple of percentage points. Almost 
banning the death penalty through a popular referendum in an American state 
would have been unimaginable just a few years earlier." Perhaps this time we 
can expect victory.

(source: Opinion, Jasmine Liu----The Stanford Daily)