[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----FLA., LA., OHIO, ARK., UTAH, USA

[Rick Halperin]

July 7



FLORIDA:

Executions and laws governing them evolve in Florida----It’s been 109 years 
since the earliest documented execution by hanging in Polk County. Plenty has 
changed in the state of Florida concerning executions in the past century.



In the spring of 1910, Florida Gov. Albert Gilchrist signed a death warrant 
mandating that Robert Dekle of Polk County be hanged for killing another man 
and a woman 6 months earlier after an argument over a dice game.

It may be the earliest documented execution to have taken place in Polk County, 
said Myrtice Young, historic preservation manager at the Polk County History 
Center.

It also may have been the last.

At that time and until 1924, the responsibility for carrying out the governor’s 
execution mandates fell to the county sheriffs, prompting the county to build a 
gallows in the Polk County Jail around 1917. It’s uncertain how many times it 
was used, if ever, before the state assumed control of executions in 1924, but 
it remained in the county’s jailhouse for more than 50 years as a silent 
testament to a bygone era.

“I remember seeing that gallows in the jail when I started working at the 
Sheriff’s Office in 1972,” said Sheriff Grady Judd. “There was a trapdoor in 
the floor, and in the ceiling there was an eye hook, where the rope went 
through.”

When the county expanded the jail in the 1970s, a worker on the construction 
crew snatched up the discarded trapdoor, along with some bars and other 
memorabilia, and assembled a makeshift museum at his Lakeland home, Judd said. 
When he died about a decade later, his wife called the Sheriff’s Office, asking 
if the department wanted his collection.

“That’s Polk County history, so we definitely wanted it,” Judd said.

The Sheriff’s Office kept the trapdoor in storage until a place could be 
identified to display it. That place came along about 20 years ago, when the 
Polk County History Center opened in the county’s 1908 courthouse in Bartow. 
The steel trapdoor remains as part of the center’s collection.

State takes control of executions

By 1924, sheriffs across the state convinced legislators that the state 
Department of Corrections should assume responsibility for executions, and the 
method should shift from hanging to electrocution. On Oct. 5, 1924, Frank 
Johnson of Duval County became the 1st to die in Florida’s electric chair.

Since those early days, Florida’s laws governing the imposition of the death 
penalty have remained fluid — changing to meet new standards in state and 
federal law.

Until 1972, juries made their sentencing recommendations in death penalty cases 
based on a presumption of death, said Tenth Judicial Circuit Public Defender 
Rex Dimmig, whose office represents indigent defendants in Polk, Highlands and 
Hardee counties.

“A jury had to have a majority vote to recommend mercy,” he said. “Otherwise, 
the defendant got the death penalty.”

But a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 1972 changed that, along with other elements 
of the death penalty process.

The nation’s high court ruled that states, including Florida, were imposing the 
death penalty arbitrarily, without a standard by which all cases were measured. 
As a result, the sentences of the 96 inmates on Florida’s death row were 
commuted to life imprisonment, and the Florida Legislature had to draft a law 
including uniform standards. In 1976, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Florida’s 
revised law, reinstating the death penalty statewide.

The state’s standards established a list of aggravating factors that 
prosecutors could argue in seeking the death penalty, which can be used only in 
premeditated murder cases. The changes also shifted the presumption — juries 
now assumed a convicted murderer would get a recommendation for life 
imprisonment unless there was a compelling reason to recommend the death 
penalty, Dimmig said.

Under the law, the presiding judge decided whether prosecutors had proven those 
aggravating factors.

That law remained in effect for 40 years — until the U.S. Supreme Court’s 
ruling in Hurst vs. Florida in 2016 again upended the state’s death penalty 
process.

Process declared unconstitutional

In January 2016, the nation’s high court ruled in a Pensacola murder case that 
Florida’s death penalty process was unconstitutional. The justices ruled that 
the state’s practice of giving judges, and not jurors, the authority to decide 
whether the state had proven the aggravating factors supporting a death 
sentence was flawed. As the legal finders of fact, only jurors held that 
authority, the court ruled.

That ruling put death penalty cases across the state on hold until the 
Legislature could revise the state’s death penalty law to reflect the Supreme 
Court’s mandate.

That revision came in 2017, when the Legislature not only mandated that juries 
decide which of the aggravating factors, if any, prosecutors have proven, but 
also that juries agree unanimously on a sentencing recommendation. Before the 
change, 12-member juries could recommend death based solely on a majority vote. 
Revisions to the law also prohibited judges from overriding a life 
recommendation and imposing a death sentence. They could, however, override 
death and impose a life sentence.

(source: The Ledger)

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

Executions and laws governing them evolve in Florida----Since 1927, Florida has 
executed 9 Polk murderers



Earl “Poker Bill” London was the 1st to die.

On an April day in 1927, as London continued to assert his innocence, the state 
took his life for killing Polk County Sheriff’s Deputy John E. Harrelson, who 
was gunned down four months earlier as he pursued London and an accomplice for 
robbing a grocery store.

Had he been convicted 4 years earlier, before the state assumed responsibility 
for all executions, London might have been hanged in the gallows at the Polk 
County Jail. But as it was, he became the 13th inmate statewide, and the 1st 
from Polk County, to die in Florida’s electric chair.

In the decades that followed, 8 more Polk County men would die at the hands of 
the state — all having been convicted of murder. 7 were electrocuted; 1 died by 
lethal injection.

-- George Washington James, 54, was the 100th Florida inmate to die when he 
was executed Oct. 29, 1943. A jury found him guilty of gunning down Wilmon 
Green on Jan. 10, 1942. It was the second death warrant Gov. Spessard Holland, 
a Bartow native, had signed on him, according to news reports. When Holland 
signed the initial warrant, James’ lawyers appealed on grounds there had been 
no black residents in the jury pool for James’ trial, creating a bias against 
James, a black man. The appeal was repeatedly rejected, leading to the 2nd 
death warrant. James became one of 35 inmates to be executed under Holland, who 
signed more death warrants than any Florida governor before or since. He served 
from 1941 to 1945.

-- Ernest Harper, 30, was executed Sept. 6, 1948, after pleading guilty to the 
robbery and hatchet murder of Thomas P. Smith, a 68-year-old Winter Haven 
bookkeeper, in August 1947. He became the 128th inmate executed by the state 
when he died in the electric chair. He was a black man, like London, James and 
Herman Barwicks, who would die in 1956. 2 more black inmates from Polk County 
would later die by electrocution — Daniel Morris Thomas and Willie Jasper 
Darden.

-- Elwood North, a Lake Wales mortician, drew nationwide attention in June 
1951 when he was accused of killing Betty Albritton, widow of wealthy cattleman 
I.W. Albritton, who had died suddenly under mysterious circumstances. She had 
changed her will 4 days earlier, naming North as the sole benefactor to her 
estimated $50,000 estate, and North, who recently had befriended the widow, was 
alone with her as she took her last breath, according to news reports at that 
time. He embalmed her and she was buried within four days of her death, leaving 
no opportunity for an autopsy and raising questions about how she died. North, 
35, was quickly arrested and convicted of 1st-degree murder, and his lawyers’ 
appeals were denied all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. North was among 
three inmates executed Oct. 4, 1954, and he maintained his innocence to the 
end.

-- Herman Barwicks, the last of 3 inmates to die by electrocution on Feb. 20, 
1956, said nothing as he calmly walked to Old Sparky, the oaken execution chair 
built by inmates in the 1920s. Barwicks, 28, had been convicted of killing his 
common-law wife, Beatrice McNeal, 2 years earlier. -- Daniel Morris Thomas, 
alleged leader of the Ski Mask Gang that terrorized Central Florida in the 
mid-1970s, fought for his life to the very end. Convicted in 1977 for the fatal 
shooting of Charles Anderson and the rape of his wife during a home-invasion 
robbery in Polk City on New Year’s Day 1976, the 37-year-old Thomas kicked, 
shouted obscenities and tried to bite the prison guards as they strapped him 
into the electric chair on April 15, 1986, according to reports in The Ledger. 
One guard pulled Thomas into a headlock as the condemned inmate fought his 
captors. Thomas refused his last meal, and when asked if he had any final 
words, he recited a lengthy statement accusing politicians of using the death 
penalty for their own political gain.

Pending executions in 2019

These are the inmates whose death warrants remain active in the U.S.

Aug. 15: Stephen Michael West, Tenn.

Aug. 15: Dexter Johnson, Texas

Aug. 21: Larry Swearingen, Texas

Aug. 22: Gary Ray Bowles, Florida

Sept. 4: Billy Jack Crutsinger, Texas

Sept. 10: Mark Soliz, Texas

Sept. 25: Robert Sparks, Texas

Oct. 1: Russell Bucklew, Missouri

Oct. 2: Stephen Barbee, Texas

Oct. 16: Randall Mays, Texas

Oct. 30: Ruben Gutierrez, Texas

Nov. 3: Charles Rhines, So. Dakota

Nov. 6: Justen Hall, Texas

Dec. 5: Lee Hall Jr., Tenn.

Note: In 2019, there have been 2 inmates die on death row, Ohio has taken 3 
executions off the list until an acceptable lethal-injection protocol is 
established, while 4 others have been stayed or rescheduled.

[source: Death Penalty Information Center]

-- Willie Jasper Darden spent 14 years on Florida’s death row and dodged 5 
death warrants before he was executed March 15, 1988 for the death of James 
Carl Turman, who was shot between the eyes during a September 1973 robbery at 
his Lakeland furniture store. On the day he was executed, Darden’s last meal of 
steak and eggs went untouched, and after guards strapped him into the execution 
chair, Darden continued to maintain his innocence in his final statement. He 
said he bore no guilt and was going with a clear conscience, and he thanked 
those who had supported his fight for justice. He was 65.

-- Phillip Atkins was executed Dec. 5, 1995, for killing his 6-year-old 
neighbor, Antonio “Tony” Castillo, in September 1981. At his trial in 1982, 
Atkins admitted to sexually molesting the boy and hitting him with a steel rod 
out of fear he would tell his parents about the molestation. His lawyers told 
jurors he had the emotional maturity of a 12-year-old child. Gov. Bob Martinez 
had signed Atkins’ death warrant in October, and it was set to expire at noon 
Dec. 5. Atkins, 40, was pronounced dead at 10:17 a.m. that morning. Atkins had 
told prison officials he didn’t want a last meal, and turned his back when 
offered a steak dinner. Instead, he drank 2 glasses of orange juice before 
entering the execution chamber.

-- Eddie Wayne Davis was the 1st condemned inmate from Polk County to die by 
lethal injection when he was executed July 10, 2014. 19 years earlier, a jury 
had convicted him of kidnapping, raping and suffocating 11-year-old Kimberly 
Waters, his former girlfriend’s daughter, and leaving her body in a trash bin. 
Davis, 45, had no last words, but did eat a hearty meal earlier in the day of 
chopped steak with onion gravy, home fries, corn, Brussels sprouts, cherry ice 
cream and a Dr. Pepper. Then he spent some time with his mother and a Catholic 
spiritual advisor. Strapped to a gurney with his left arm extended, Davis 
murmured prayers as the execution team prepared for his death around him. 
Eleven minutes after the drugs began flowing into his veins, Davis was 
pronounced dead.

Since October 1924, when Frank Johnson of Duval County became the 1st condemned 
murderer to be executed by the state, 294 condemned inmates have died in 
Florida’s electric chair or by lethal injection, according to the Department of 
Corrections. Most recently, convicted rapist and serial killer Bobby Joe Long, 
65, of Tampa, died by lethal injection on May 23 at Florida State Prison near 
Raiford, 34 years after he had been condemned to death.

Less than 3 weeks after Long was executed, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed his 2nd 
death warrant since taking office in January, ordering the execution of serial 
killer Gary Ray Bowles, 57, for the 1994 murder of a Jacksonville Beach man. 
Bowles is scheduled to die by lethal injection Aug. 22.

(source: News Chief)








LOUISIANA:

Jury selection continues through weekend----Prospective jurors need ability to 
consider both life in prison and the death penalty



Jury selection continued Friday in Lafayette for the trial of a 57-year-old man 
accused of 1st-degree murder in the fatal shooting of Louisiana State Trooper 
Steven Vincent in 2015.

The trial of Kevin Daigle will take place in Lafayette after a full change of 
venue was granted last year by Judge Clayton Davis.

As of Friday, 10 panels of jury members had been questioned and 55 potential 
jurors had been “death qualified.” That means those people told the prosecution 
and defense they had the ability to consider both life in prison or the death 
penalty should Daigle be convicted.

More potential jurors will still be picked before a jury is seated and 
alternates are finalized.

Vincent, a 13-year veteran of the Louisiana State Police force, was 44 when he 
died Aug. 24, 2015.

Davis previously granted a motion by the defense to limit law enforcement 
presence in the courtroom during Daigle’s trial. Additionally, some evidence in 
this case remains under seal.

The prosecution team is composed of Lea Hall, Jacob Johnson, and Charles 
Robinson of the Calcasieu Parish District Attorney’s office. The defense team 
is made up of Kyla Romanach and Bruce E. Unangst.

Daigle’s defense team had continually pushed for a full change of venue for 
trial, saying the team did not feel Daigle would get a fair trial in Calcasieu 
Parish because residents of this area are emotionally invested in the loss of 
Vincent.

Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty.

Because of that factor, the jury selection process can take longer than usual.

Calcasieu District Attorney John DeRosier said the prosecution is looking for 
“fair and impartial jurors” who can look at the case, weigh the evidence and 
make their determination based on those things.

Romanach, during earlier questioning of potential jurors, told them the death 
penalty is never “required.” She told prospective jurors they need the ability 
to be able to consider both life in prison and the death penalty.

Those who cannot consider both are excused from serving on the jury.

If convicted of 1st-degree murder, the trial would move into the penalty phase 
where jurors would hear testimony and decide if Daigle should receive the death 
penalty.

Jury selection is expected to continue through the weekend in 15th Judicial 
District Court in Lafayette.

(source: americanpress.com)








OHIO:

2 Columbus men charged in internet cafe robberies, including one involving 
fatal shooting



2 Columbus men have been charged in connection with a series of armed robberies 
at local internet gaming cafes, including one that resulted in the deaths of 2 
people.

Deshan Townsend and Desjuan Harris appeard in federal court Friday.

The investigation was a joint operation between the Columbus Police and the 
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). The FBI was involved because the cafes 
are engaged in interstate commerce, making the crimes that occurred there 
federal crimes.

Townsend and Harris were arrested by a Columbus SWAT team July 3.

The criminal complaint said two suspects went into Players Paradise on East 
Broad Street during the early morning hours of Jan. 20.

According to court documents, the 2 tried to force their way past a female 
employee and into the business’ office, which is when they were confronted by 
an armed security guard.

Court documents state 1 of the suspects shot and killed both the guard, Joseph 
Arrington, and his wife, the female employee, Karen Arrington.

The criminal complaint also alleges Townsend and Harris were responsible for an 
earlier robbery at the same location, and another robbery at a diffent internet 
cafe on Alum Creek Drive.

More arrests are possible, police said.

“This investigation is ongoing,” Ben Glassman, the U.S. Attorney for the 
Southern District of Ohio, said. “If you take a close look at the complaint, 
there’s an indication that these 2 were not the only people involved in these 
robberies — so the investigation is ongoing and hopefully we will get to the 
bottom of the entire scheme.”

The criminal complaint charges Townsend with 3 counts of interfering with 
interstate commerce by robbery, 3 counts of brandishing a firearm during a 
crime of violence, and 2 count of use of a firearm during the commission of a 
crime of violence.

Harris is charged with 2 counts of interfering with interstate commerce by 
robbery and 1 count of brandishing a firearm during a crime of violence.

Neither Townsend nor Harris is currently facing murder charges in connection 
with the Jan. 20 incident.

If convicted of current charges, Harris could face life in prison. Townsend, 
who has an additional charge of using a firearm, could face the death penalty.

(source: WCMH news)








ARKANSAS:

Death row inmate begs for mercy in teen’s case



Life on death row is taking its toll on Scotty Gardner.

>From his cell in the Varner Unit, Gardner continues writing me letters in 
support of the 2 boys accused of killing Elvia Fragstein. But, his tone has 
changed.

Initially, Scotty was OK with the fact that he didn’t put up a fight in court. 
He was OK with receiving the death penalty at the time. His thoughts on this 
have changed, and now he hopes he can influence Faulkner County residents to 
not sentence either of the Pine Bluff teens accused in the Fragstein case to 
death.

The younger of the teens, Robert Smith III, cannot be sentenced to death 
because he was 16 years old when the alleged offense occurred. A juvenile 
transfer hearing in his case wrapped up Wednesday. However, no decision has 
been made as to whether it will stay in adult court or move to the juvenile 
division yet.

Smith’s older cousin is scheduled to stand trial in late September. Tacori D. 
Mackrell faces a death sentence if found guilty.

Scotty feels these two are too young to be subjected to the death penalty. In 
his own case, he now wishes he would have accepted a plea offer from local 
prosecutors.

The death row inmate met with his attorney in late May. While his former 
defender, Katherine S. Streett, stopped by to check in on Gardner, he says she 
also reminded him he had the chance to take an offer from the state. It was 
Scotty’s decision to face a jury -- a jury that found him guilty of capital 
murder within 15 minutes and deliberated for about an hour before deciding he 
would receive the death penalty.

“I told her the worst mistake wasn’t murder, it was making Faulkner County give 
me the death sentence,” Gardner writes of his recent conversation with his 
former attorney. “Kate reminded me I could have took a plea. I couldn’t say 
anything other than ... I wish I would have.”

Facing a Faulkner County jury “ain’t no game or no joke,” Gardner said.

He asks for mercy. Not for him, but for Smith and Mackrell. As before, I find 
so much hypocrisy behind Scotty’s letters.

Scotty claims the reasoning behind these letters has nothing to do with his 
case, but to shed light on Smith and Mackrell’s cases. To make a plea with area 
residents not to sentence the teens to death.

Where was this need for mercy when Scotty strangled Susan “Heather” Stubbs to 
death in 2016?

Jail is not a great place to be, Scotty said. He also said he has learned life 
on death row is worse.

“I know while your in jail you think damn, I just need some air — you just want 
[to] go outside and move around — maybe play ball with your buddies, maybe just 
look around,” he wrote. “Well, on death row it’s worse. I can’t go out on the 
yard. I can’t go to the chow hall. I can’t get a job. I can’t do anything but 
sit in this cell.”

As he listens to the yelling and screaming of other inmates each day, Gardner 
said he hopes his words will remind others that “killing them isn’t justice.”

(source: Times Record)




UTAH:

Police expert: here’s what could have led to finding MacKenzie Lueck’s remains



After Friday’s announcement that police recovered the body of murdered 
University of Utah student MacKenzie Lueck in Logan Canyon, nearly 75 miles 
from where she was last seen, it brings up questions as to what led law 
enforcement to that area.

Until Friday, the public has only known about the investigation and search at 
suspect Ayoola Ajayi’s home in Salt Lake City.

It was in the home’s backyard that police said they found human tissue matching 
MacKenzie’s DNA, in a burn pile in the backyard.

In a press conference Friday morning, Salt Lake City Police and Salt Lake 
County District Attorney Sim Gill couldn’t give information on what tipped 
investigators off to where they found her remains in Logan Canyon.

However, a law enforcement expert is giving a few possibilities, based on his 
experience with investigations.

Chris Bertram, a retired deputy chief from the Unified Police Department, said 
there are 2 probabilities.

“One is that he is cooperating, and we as the public just don't know that,” he 
said in an interview Friday afternoon.

Bertram, now a private investigator and assistant professor at Salt Lake 
Community College, indicated that if Ajayi is now cooperating with police, it 
could be because a plea deal is in the works.

Another way the investigation may have taken police to Logan Canyon could have 
been from digging into Ajayi’s background and technology data.

“It's important to remember that he lived in Logan,” Bertram said. “He may have 
been comfortable with that area. As investigators have done the backgrounds on 
him, they may have found areas that he was very familiar with or that he liked 
to go to.”

In addition to that background information, he said police could have used 
technology to trace and track Ajayi’s whereabouts during key moments in the 
days after MacKenzie went missing.

“In that case — traveling or following cell phone sites, or tracking on his 
phone, or maybe a tracking on the GPS in his vehicle — they may have absolutely 
downloaded that and then able to determine where he was,” Bertram explained.

If they were able to find a specific location, he said investigators could have 
gone and searched from there.

“They could have used other tools, like cadaver dogs or other type[s] of 
technology, cameras in the area to determine where he was, and that could have 
led them to the body,” Bertram said.

With the remains now recovered, he talked about how that could help answer some 
huge questions in the investigation into her death.

“Can they determine how she died, and what were circumstances of that? What 
surrounded that?” Bertram asked. “That will, again, strengthen for the district 
attorney the case that they have, whether this is a capital case or a homicide 
case.”

If this turns into a capital case, that could mean the state would seek the 
death penalty or life in prison.

For now, with the discovery of Lueck's remains, Bertram said District Attorney 
Sim Gill has enough to file formal charges and go to trial.

“Unless the subject is cooperating and they're making a deal arrangement, I 
think at this point Sim has everything he needs to formally charge him,” 
Bertram said. “Especially with the charges that he was booked into jail on.”

Ajayi is in the Salt Lake County Jail on suspicion of aggravated murder, 
aggravated kidnapping, obstruction of justice and desecration of a body.

Gill said in the press conference Friday morning that they expected to file 
charges early next week.

(source: Fox News)








USA:

‘WORSE THAN MURDER’----Could Secret Cables Have Saved Ethel Rosenberg From the 
Electric Chair? Even as Ethel Rosenberg was strapped into the electric chair 
for spying for Moscow in 1953, decrypted cables might have spared her. But they 
were released only decades later.



At 8:11 on the evening of June 19, 1953, Ethel Rosenberg was strapped into the 
electric chair at the New York State prison known as Sing Sing. She was 37 
years old and the mother of two young sons. The chair, made of oak and iron, 
had killed hundreds of convicted criminals over the years, including her 
husband, Julius Rosenberg, a few minutes before. But the chair was not always 
reliable, which was one reason inmates gave it the cynical name “Old Sparky.”

Two years earlier, when both Rosenbergs were convicted of spying for Moscow, 
Federal Judge Irving R. Kaufman had handed down their death sentences. The 
Rosenbergs’ crime, he said, was “worse than murder.” But in fact the penalty 
was not about justice. It was about vengeance for a loss the American public 
felt was so enormous that someone must be made to pay a horrible price.

It was “as if a society turned its magnifying lens on these people until they 
caught fire and were burned alive,” said novelist E. L. Doctorow, whose The 
Book of Daniel was a fictional account of the case.

(source: The Daily Beast)

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

Prosecutors struggle with criminal justice reform



Prosecutors are the most powerful people in the criminal justice system. As 
sentencing guidelines and mandatory sentencing have diminished the influence of 
judges, prosecutors have filled the void.

Prosecutors have an enormous amount of discretion. A prosecutor can decide who 
gets charged; who gets a favorable plea; who goes to trial; and who walks with 
a slap on the wrist. Some reform-minded practitioners have complained that 
prosecutors’ laser focus on obtaining convictions and securing prison sentences 
are a major reason for the soaring cost of mass incarceration.

There are an estimated 2,400 prosecutors’ offices across the country. The 
biggest threat to the authority of prosecutors is from within. New prosecutors 
are getting elected and bringing with them new ideas and a departure from the 
old mantra “tough on crime.”

In Ferguson, Missouri - rocked by the unrest following the killing of Michael 
Brown - Wesley Bell, a Ferguson city councilman, who worked with the Department 
of Justice on the federal consent decree to reform the police department, 
decided to run for district attorney.

He beat 7-term incumbent Bob McCulloch who refused to indict the police officer 
who killed Brown. According to the ABA Journal, under McCulloch’s watch, the 
Department of Justice “issued a scathing report that held the Ferguson Police 
Department accountable for a sustained and egregious pattern of racial 
profiling and abuse.”

In Orange County, Florida, Aramis Ayala pulled-off an upset victory over an 
incumbent making her the first African American state’s attorney in Florida’s 
history.

Just 2 months after taking office, Ayala announced that her office would no 
longer seek the death penalty, arguing it was costly, inhumane and did not 
deter violent crime or promote public safety. Florida Governor Rick Scott 
challenged her prosecutorial discretion. Ayala sued, challenging Scott’s 
authority to remove cases from her jurisdiction, but she lost in the Florida 
Supreme Court. According to the ABA Journal, her office instituted a 7-attorney 
panel to review all 1st-degree murder cases to determine whether the death 
penalty would be appropriate. She won’t run for reelection in 2020.

Larry Krasner unexpectedly won the district attorney’s seat in Philadelphia. He 
had been a public defender and a civil rights attorney, often taking on the 
police.

Krasner instituted immediate reforms, according to the ABA Journal. He 
announced the office would no longer prosecute sex workers with fewer than 3 
prior offenses; would not prosecute marijuana possession cases; and would not 
seek cash bail for low-level offenses.

Some current prosecutors are not accepting reform as inevitable. The district 
attorney’s office in San Diego has proposed that plea bargains include a 
provision that the defendant forego any future benefit from criminal justice 
reform measures - including legislation or court decisions that might reduce 
sentences.

There is no question that a defendant could waive his right to appeal in 
exchange for a plea deal. However, the defendant knows the strength of his case 
and the specific rights he is giving up. The district attorney in San Diego is 
asking defendants to give up a right or privilege not yet known.

Robert Weisberg, a criminal law professor at Stanford University, told The 
Marshall Project that the deals could raise constitutional questions.

Pleas must be knowing and voluntary and it is not clear if a person can give up 
a right that does not yet exist.

“This one is pushing the envelope as far as it can go,” Weisberg said. “It’s a 
pretty slick and aggressive prosecutorial move.”

The actions of the San Diego District Attorney’s Office may soon run afoul of 
the separation of powers. The California legislature is considering a Bill that 
would prohibit prosecutors from forcing defendants to waive yet unknown rights 
in exchange for a favorable plea.

If such a law is enacted district attorney’s will be foreclosed from seeking 
such waivers.

(source: Matthew Mangino, Dodge City Daily Globe)