I write to urge you to not appeal Jones v. Chappell, the recent federal court decision holding that the administration of California's death penalty is irrevocably dysfunctional, resulting in systemic delays in which only the "random few" are executed in violation of the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.
As U.S. District Judge Cormac J. Carney found, of the over 900 people that have been sentenced to death since the adoption of the death penalty in 1978, 13 have been executed, 94 have died of other causes. There are currently 748 death row inmates. The process for reviewing their death sentences takes an average of 25 years and is getting longer -- delays, as the court found, that are inherent in the system and not the fault of inmates themselves.
I
had the good fortune of meeting you in 2007, at a Death Penalty Focus Awards
Dinner when, as San Francisco District Attorney, you were given the Mario Cuomo Acts of Courage Award for declining to authorize death penalty prosecutions.
Subsequently, when you campaigned for Attorney General, you acknowledged that California's death penalty system is flawed. You argued that the death penalty has not made us safer and that the money spent every year on the death penalty could be far more productively used to fund programs which aim to stop recidivism. As you put it, "not housing octogenarians on Death Row could put 1,000 more cops on the street."
I imagine as Attorney General you now have an even clearer sense of how broken and how costly the death penalty is. As the bipartisan California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice found, the system continues to be "plagued with excessive delay in the appointment of counsel" and "a severe backlog in the review" of cases before the California Supreme Court.
An extensive study headed Judge Arthur Alarcon determined that California's death penalty system has cost taxpayers roughly $4 billion "to fund a dysfunctional death penalty system that has carried out no more than 13 executions." But despite these vast expenditures, the current Chief Justice of the State of California Tani Cantil-Sakauye acknowledged, the death penalty is not effective and fixing its problems would require "structural changes" that the State cannot afford. Her predecessor, Ron George, who was Chief Justice for 15 years, came to the same conclusion, describing California's death penalty scheme as "dysfunctional."
The infrequency of executions and the randomness with regard to which condemned inmates actually will be executed have made a mockery of the supposedly rational justifications for the death penalty – deterrence and retribution. In a well-reasoned and well-documented opinion, a federal judge has now agreed: "For all practical purposes ... a sentence of death in California is a sentence of life imprisonment with the remote possibility of death -- a sentence no rational legislature or jury could ever impose."
Subsequently, when you campaigned for Attorney General, you acknowledged that California's death penalty system is flawed. You argued that the death penalty has not made us safer and that the money spent every year on the death penalty could be far more productively used to fund programs which aim to stop recidivism. As you put it, "not housing octogenarians on Death Row could put 1,000 more cops on the street."
I imagine as Attorney General you now have an even clearer sense of how broken and how costly the death penalty is. As the bipartisan California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice found, the system continues to be "plagued with excessive delay in the appointment of counsel" and "a severe backlog in the review" of cases before the California Supreme Court.
An extensive study headed Judge Arthur Alarcon determined that California's death penalty system has cost taxpayers roughly $4 billion "to fund a dysfunctional death penalty system that has carried out no more than 13 executions." But despite these vast expenditures, the current Chief Justice of the State of California Tani Cantil-Sakauye acknowledged, the death penalty is not effective and fixing its problems would require "structural changes" that the State cannot afford. Her predecessor, Ron George, who was Chief Justice for 15 years, came to the same conclusion, describing California's death penalty scheme as "dysfunctional."
The infrequency of executions and the randomness with regard to which condemned inmates actually will be executed have made a mockery of the supposedly rational justifications for the death penalty – deterrence and retribution. In a well-reasoned and well-documented opinion, a federal judge has now agreed: "For all practical purposes ... a sentence of death in California is a sentence of life imprisonment with the remote possibility of death -- a sentence no rational legislature or jury could ever impose."
As Attorney General, representing the People of California, you have a duty to enforce and apply the law. But where a court has found that law to be unconstitutional, you are well within your discretion to abide by the court's decision. By not appealing a ruling that confirms what you have long stated -- that California's death penalty is broken -- you will again be taking the kind of principled position for which you were honored when we met years ago and for which you are so admired.
(Related post: California's Cruel and Unusual Death Penalty)
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