What’s one thing that law enforcement and at least some of California’s 725 death row inmates agree on? The answer is we both oppose Prop. 34 on the Nov. 6 ballot.
Really – read on.
Prop. 34 would repeal the death penalty and replace it with life in prison without possibility of parole. The LAPPL has joined with the greater law enforcement community in strenuously opposing the proposition.
Now an attorney who has represented a number of death row inmates explains in a San Francisco Chronicle story how convoluted legal procedures surrounding capital punishment in California have caused most of the death row inmates to oppose Prop. 34 as well.
A recent survey by the Field Poll and the Institute of Governmental Studies at UC Berkeley found that 42 percent of likely voters would repeal the death penalty while 45 percent would retain death as a punishment. Thirteen percent of likely voters are still undecided, giving interest groups on both sides of the measure incentive to press their cases through Election Day.
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The LAPPL site links to a story by the San Francisco Chronicle:
It's not that they want to die, attorney Robert Bryan said. They just want to hang on to the possibility of proving that they're innocent, or at least that they were wrongly convicted. That would require state funding for lawyers and investigators - funding that Proposition 34 would eliminate for many Death Row inmates after the first round of appeals.
Bryan has represented several condemned prisoners in California as well as Mumia Abu-Jamal, the radical activist and commentator whose death sentence for the murder of a Philadelphia policeman was recently reduced to life in prison. The attorney said California inmates have told him they'd prefer the current law, with its prospect of lethal injection, to one that would reduce their appellate rights.
"Many of them say, 'I'd rather gamble and have the death penalty dangling there but be able to fight to right a wrong,' " Bryan said.
Or, as Death Row inmate Correll Thomas put it in a recent newspaper essay, if Prop. 34 passes, "the courthouse doors will be slammed forever."
Added legal rights
The seeming paradox reflects the tangled legal procedures surrounding capital punishment and the state's efforts to guard against wrongful convictions and executions by providing additional rights to the condemned.
All criminal defendants who can't afford to hire a lawyer have a right to legal representation, at state expense, for their trial and appeal. But only those sentenced to death are guaranteed a state-funded legal team for the post-appellate proceedings known as habeas corpus.
Habeas corpus allows inmates to challenge their convictions or sentence for reasons outside the trial record - typically, incompetent legal representation, misconduct by a judge or juror, or newly discovered evidence. Such challenges are reviewed by both state and federal courts.
For condemned prisoners, it often represents their best chance to stave off execution by presenting their claims to federal judges, who are appointed for life, rather than elected state judges. A ruling that leads to their acquittal, or even a finding of innocence, is also more likely in habeas corpus than in the earlier direct appeal.
Read more at the San Francisco Chronicle
Above:
The main entrance into San Quentin State Prison in San Rafael, Calif., Friday Dec. 19, 2008 as seen from the interior courtyard. Photo: Michael Macor, The Chronicle / SF
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