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Thread: Californians for Death Penalty Reform & Savings

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    Californians for Death Penalty Reform & Savings

    Taking the Initiative

    Posted by Kent Scheidegger

    Officer Larry Lasater of the Pittsburg, California Police Department would have been 44 today. The thug who gunned him down sits on California's death row. He has been there six years with no end in sight. Regrettably, the California Legislature is run by people who care more about murderers than victims and who have repeatedly killed the reforms needed to complete these cases in a reasonable time.

    Today an initiative was filed with the California Attorney General to take the reform question directly to the people. If the requisite number of signatures can be gathered, it will be on the ballot in the November 2014 election.

    Drafted by a committee including yours truly, it will, if approved, fix the key problems that are actually wrong with current law, not to be confused with the intentional misdiagnosis of the majority report of John Burton's stacked commission.

    I will have a full paper later explaining the reforms, what is actually wrong, and why these reforms will fix what is actually wrong.

    There is little doubt that the people will vote for reform if given the choice between reform and the status quo. Last year, given the unpalatable choice of repeal versus the status quo, a majority voted to keep the death penalty despite a massive funding advantage for the other side. Given a choice between the status quo and a set of reforms that will make the death penalty effective and save taxpayer dollars at the same time, a landslide is likely.

    The website for Californians for Death Penalty Reform & Savings is here (http://www.deathpenaltyreform.com/), and it is also linked in the Links segment of this blog.

    http://www.crimeandconsequences.com/...nitiative.html

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    Justice for victims, not luxuries for Death Row inmates

    By Kermit Alexander

    California's death penalty system needs to change. Tiequon Cox, who has lived on Death Row for more than 27 years, has exhausted all of his federal and state appeals. On Dec. 1, he celebrated another birthday. Why do I care about Cox? Because on Aug. 31, 1984, Cox murdered my mother, sister and two nephews during an early morning home invasion. Cox, a for-hire killer, went to the wrong address and mistakenly killed my family - four acts of murder committed on an innocent family in exchange for $3,500.

    In the past 29 years, I have missed my mother every day. Yet my family's murderer continues to live, even though the jury found him guilty and then unanimously recommended the death penalty.

    However, California's death penalty has become ineffective because of waste, delays and inefficiencies. Just last year, voters upheld the state's death penalty by defeating Proposition 34. A coalition of district attorneys, law enforcement and victim's rights advocates like me are proposing a statewide ballot initiative to change the death penalty system in California. The initiative would revamp the appeals process, Death Row housing and victim restitution as well as the appointment of appellate counsel and agency oversight.

    Today, my family's killer has his own cell with several luxury items that many general population inmates aren't allowed to have. He gets extended visitor privileges and is not required to work or pay restitution for his crimes. A commonsense reform would be to double-house Death Row inmates, which also would save California tens of millions of dollars a year. Under the rules, Death Row inmates spend their days either in their cells or in the recreation yard. Our initiative would require these inmates to work and earn money to repay the victims of their horrific crimes. If the inmate chooses not to work, then he or she would lose his or her television, radio or other luxury items.

    It is not fair to the victims' families or to the convicted inmates to have to wait as long as 10 years before the first appeal is heard. The California Supreme Court is so backlogged that a Death Row inmate does not receive his/her first appeal hearing for 12 years. Even worse, it takes four to five years before a state-appointed appeals attorney is even assigned. We must reform this process!

    Our initiative would expand the number of eligible appellate attorneys and move the first appeal to the state Court of Appeal, with the requirement of hearing the first appeal within five years.

    The goal is not to execute people more quickly without due process; the goal is to ensure that those who have committed the worst crimes have their sentences carried out.

    California's 730-plus Death Row inmates have murdered more than 1,000 people, including 229 children and 43 police officers. Of those victims, 235 were raped and 90 were tortured. These statistics include my mother, sister and two nephews.

    Gov. Jerry Brown, who is personally opposed to the death penalty, has reviewed many death penalty cases, and stated: "I know people say, 'Oh, there have been all these innocent people,' Well, I have not seen one name on Death Row that's been told to me."

    Today, I am standing with the victims and their families to unite for changes in California's death penalty system. California needs to stand by its promise to protect its citizens and bring justice to the victims.

    Kermit Alexander, who was a defensive back for the San Francisco 49ers from 1963 to 1969, is a death penalty reform advocate.


    http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/openfo...ow-5073111.php

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    California Death Penalty Initiative

    Posted by Kent Scheidegger

    The California Attorney General has prepared a title and summary for the initiative to reform the state's death penalty, as required by law. Here it is:

    DEATH PENALTY. PROCEDURES. INITIATIVE STATUTORY AND CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT. Gives state appellate courts jurisdiction over death penalty appeals, before consideration by California Supreme Court. Changes procedures governing state court petitions challenging death penalty convictions and sentences. Designates superior court for initial petitions and limits successive petitions. Imposes time limits on state court death penalty review. Requires appointed attorneys who take noncapital appeals to accept death penalty appeals. Exempts prison officials from existing regulation process for developing execution methods. Authorizes death row inmate transfers among California state prisons. States death row inmates are required to work and pay victim restitution. Summary of estimate by Legislative Analyst and Director of Finance of fiscal impact on state and local government: Increased state costs potentially in the tens of millions of dollars annually for several years related to direct appeals and habeas corpus proceedings, with the fiscal impact on such costs being unknown in the long run. Potential state correctional savings in the tens of millions of dollars annually. (13-0055.)

    A pretty fair summary of the initiative overall, given the constraint of putting it in 100 words.

    The last two sentences, in bold, come from the fiscal analysis by the Legislative Analyst Office, and I think the LAO overstates costs and understates savings. Yes, the initiative will increase annual budgets in the first couple of years as the backlog is cleared out, but this is mostly moving up expenses that would be incurred anyway. The savings are understated. The initiative will eliminate successive state habeas petitions in most cases (those with no question of actual innocence or ineligibility, which is the vast majority). Long-term, we will eliminate the costs of a long period of incarceration and the skyrocketing cost of health care for aging inmates.

    The campaign website is here. Every contribution helps.

    http://www.crimeandconsequences.com/...lty-initi.html

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    3 ex-governors to push Calif. death penalty reform

    Three former California governors will back a proposed ballot initiative designed to speed up the state's lengthy death penalty process.

    Former Govs. George Deukmejian, Pete Wilson and Gray Davis plan to announce the start of signature-gathering efforts for a ballot measure at a midmorning Thursday news conference in Los Angeles.

    On a 2012 ballot, 53 percent of California voters rejected an initiative that would have repealed the death penalty.

    Nonetheless, executions have been halted since 2006 because of lawsuits in federal and state courts over the three-drug lethal-injection method that had been used to carry out death sentences.

    There are more than 700 prisoners on California's death row.

    Read more: http://www.kcra.com/news/3-exgoverno...#ixzz2tEBvwdEm
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

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    Video of the campaign kickoff event:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69fxD...re=c4-overview

    Campaign web site:

    http://www.deathpenaltyreform.com/

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    Capital Cases and the California Courts of Appeal

    Posted by Kent Scheidegger

    As noted previously on this blog, an initiative to fix California's death penalty is now circulating. The initiative has been carefully drafted so that few solid arguments can be made against it from either a policy or a constitutional perspective. The opposition will be from people who do not want the death penalty to work so that they can claim its "broken" status as a reason to repeal it. That ulterior motive should be transparent to the voters, who overwhelmingly favor mending it over ending it.

    So I've been curious to see what arguments the opponents would come up with. We are now seeing them trickle out. One bogus argument being floated is that the initiative would overwhelm California's intermediate appellate courts, the courts of appeal.
    In most states there are two levels of appellate courts for felony cases. Every convicted felony defendant gets an appeal as of right to an intermediate appellate court, typically decided by a three-judge panel. Then, the state's highest court can review the case if it chooses, but it only reviews a small fraction of the cases, generally those presenting questions of law on which the lower courts have divided.

    A few small states have no intermediate level. All felony cases go to the state's high court. Texas and Oklahoma have two-headed court systems. After the intermediate appellate court, civil cases go to the Supreme Court and criminal cases go to the Court of Criminal Appeals.

    In most states, but not the federal system, all capital cases bypass the intermediate level and go directly to the highest court of criminal jurisdiction. That works okay in smaller states with few capital cases. It's not too bad in Texas, where the highest criminal court does only criminal cases and has no civil workload. In larger states with a single high court it can be a problem, and the problem is particularly acute in the largest state, California.

    Consider, for example, the case of Daniel Frederickson, sentenced to death in Orange County in 1998. First, the Supreme Court allowed appointment of counsel, certification of the record, and briefing to drag on for 13 years. That extended delay is quite unnecessary, but it is a topic for another post. Briefing was completed on March 8, 2011. Nothing has happened since. Why not? Of course capital cases are complex, but they don't take three years to decide. There is no case that cannot be decided within a year of the completion of briefing.

    The California Supreme Court is simply overloaded. As of March 4, 2014, according to the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, there are 752 death sentences among 746 inmates on death row. (Some have more than one.) Of these, 293 have been affirmed on direct appeal, and 11 have been reversed and are awaiting retrial. That leaves a backlog of 448 sentences to review, too much for seven justices, even with a large staff.

    The cases really are not that difficult relative to other murder cases. The guilt-phase issues are not much different from a noncapital murder case. The penalty-phase issues are governed by a large, established body of caselaw from the state and federal high courts, leaving no major questions of law to resolve. It's pretty much applying established law to particular facts, which is what the courts of appeal do day in and day out. The records and briefs are larger than noncapital first-degree murder cases because there are two phases of the trial, but they are not really more difficult otherwise.

    How much of an increase in workload would it be for the intermediate courts of appeal to decide these cases in the first instance? The Judicial Council's annual report looks at workloads in terms of pending appeals per authorized justice and filings and dispositions per year per authorized justice. (See Judicial Council of California, 2013 Court Statistics Report, pp. 21-22.) Statewide, there were 15,531 appeals disposed of in Fiscal Year 2011-12 and 13,051 appeals pending at the end of the fiscal year. There are 105 authorized justices. These are the most recent figures available.

    Adding 448 cases to the backlog adds 4 cases per justice to the existing 124 cases per justice. That is an increase of only about 3% in the number of cases. Even allowing that capital cases have more issues per case than a typical appeal, this is still a backlog that can be disposed of in a few years. Sitting in three-judge panels, the backlog will require that each justice sit on about 12 cases and write about 4 majority opinions on average. That is hardly a crushing burden. To further reduce the workload, the court could issue a "per curiam" memorandum, written by the staff, disposing of claims that are clearly meritless under established law, which is generally most of them. A signed opinion could then address the issues with some substance, typically a small number.

    California has been running around 20 incoming capital appeals a year. Once the backlog is cleared, a justice will only have to write a majority opinion once every five years and only sit on a panel about once every other year. This is a minimal increase in workload.

    The Supreme Court's workload will be vastly reduced. Given the importance of capital cases, they will still have a special place at the Supreme Court. The high court will have to review the result, but not every nuance of the opinion, in every case. In nearly all cases, this should end with a one-line summary affirmance, just as the U.S. Supreme Court did in the days when its mandatory appellate docket was much larger than it is today.

    It is perfectly obvious that taking the workload presently assigned to 7 people and spreading it among 105 is a far more efficient way to deal with a group of cases that today consists mostly of routine and frequently frivolous claims. This change will, along with the other reforms, make the system work. That is exactly why the opponents oppose it.

    http://www.crimeandconsequences.com/...-californ.html

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    Death-Penalty Reform Initiative Pushed To 2016

    A coalition of law enforcement officers, prosecutors and crime victims announced Friday that it will wait until November 2016 to place a death-penalty reform measure on the ballot.

    Backers of the proposed initiative to speed up executions and save money said this delay gives them more time to raise money, build support and gather signatures.

    The initiative would have limited appeals by prisoners facing the death penalty and removed them from special death-row housing. It would have also required death row prisoners to work in prisons to pay restitution to victims’ families. Former Govs. George Deukmejian, Pete Wilson and Gray Davis announced in February they would push to reform a system crippled with waste and inefficiency.

    More than 700 California prisoners are on death row, but the last execution was in 2006 because of lawsuits challenging the drugs used in lethal injections.

    California voters upheld the state’s use of capital punishment in 2012 when Proposition 34, which would have to repealed the death penalty, failed by four percentage points.

    “This is an issue about criminal justice and reforming the criminal justice system,” said Chris Orrock, a political consultant for Californians for Death Penalty Reform and Savings. “(Voters) already said we want the death penalty. We just want reforms put in place.”

    Critics say the latest initiative would lead to more delays by sparking new legal challenges.

    “Worst of all, it will greatly increase the risk that California could execute an innocent person,” Ana Zamora of the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California said in a statement issued in February.

    Controversies surrounding lethal injections have put a spotlight on the death penalty nationwide, as states struggle to obtain the drugs needed for executions and fight to keep their sources secret. A botched execution of an Oklahoma inmate with a new drug combination in April fueled questions about whether states could administer lethal injections meeting constitutional standards.

    Orrock said the recent controversy did not factor into the decision to delay the vote on death-penalty reform because the initiative focuses on events leading up to an execution.

    http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2014/...ushed-to-2016/
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    Family Of Murder Victims Seek Death Penalty Reforms In California

    CBS Los Angeles News

    LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — Advocates for death penalty reform are trying to get sweeping changes made in the way California’s justice system.

    On Friday, a large group of power players — among them people who have lost loved ones to murder — made their case to the media.

    The group, in turn, wants the voters to make the final call on their reform ideas at the ballot box.

    KCAL9’s Dave Lopez attended the gathering.

    Kermit Alexander, onetime NFL player, was among those who spoke. A gang member killed his mother and three other relatives.

    “He put three shots into my mother’s head,” said Alexander choking back tears. The gang member — namely Tiequon Aundray Cox — was sentenced to death in 1865, and is still on death row.

    “And her last words were ‘Please don’t hurt my mother and sister,'” said Marc Klaas, speaking about his daughter Polly.

    Her murderer was sentenced to death 22 years ago.

    “That isn’t justice for my daughter,” Klaas said.

    The murder victim’s families were surrounded by DA’s and law enforcement officials who all said the system needs fixing.

    The group said they had a budget of $2 million — money already raised to help in an awareness campaign.

    They said they hoped to gather 350,000 signatures on petitions to get their reform measures on the November 2016 ballot.

    Among the reforms:

    • An immediate appeal for the convicted.

    • Reduced waiting time. It can take up to five years to get an attorney.

    • The average time on death row is 17 years. Advocates want to get that down to 8-10 years.

    • They also want to eliminate death row and single cells for inmates and put convicts among the general prison population.

    The reform advocates said today that when they first introduced these reforms in 2014, they made a mistake — they lacked funding for an awareness campaign. And now they have it.

    Seventeen of the current 750 inmates on death row have been there for more than 30 years, Lopez reported.

    http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2015/...in-california/
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    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    The text of the 2016 initiative is here.

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    Kermit Alexander is a great man.

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