Replace death penalty with permanent imprisonment


Jon Streeter, Bill Hing,Diane Bellas

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

After spending four years on the California Commission on the Fair
Administration of Justice, we were pleased to see state Sen. Tom
Harmon, R-Huntington Beach, cite our commission's report on the death
penalty in his June 15 Open Forum piece, "Legal stalling packs Death
Row." We are concerned, however, that Harmon did not disclose the
reasons we concluded that California's death penalty is not working.
He also failed to disclose that it will cost more than $230 million a
year to fix it.

The commission was created by the Senate to investigate the problems
of wrongful convictions and wrongful executions. After issuing eight
reports on the causes of wrongful convictions, we turned our
attention to the administration of the death penalty. Ours was the
first comprehensive analysis of the problems with the California's
death penalty, the reforms needed, the possible alternatives and the
costs.

As the senator states, "the death penalty system in California is
broken and unworkable." We found that it now takes an average of 25
years for death penalty cases to move through the mandatory court
review process. However, the reason these appeals take so long is not
because of "legal maneuverings. " The primary cause of these delays is
the lack of attorneys willing to take these cases and the lack of
court staff to review them. A person sentenced to death today in
California will wait eight to 10 years before an attorney will be
appointed to represent him in a legal challenge to his conviction.
Without an attorney, there are no legal maneuverings at all.

Once an attorney is appointed, the case is investigated and briefs
are filed in court. Then it will be three to five years before the
California Supreme Court has time to review the case. The court has a
backlog of 80 cases waiting for its review. Why? The court does not
have the time or staff to review the cases more quickly.

But long delays are not the only problem plaguing our death penalty
system. Our commission concluded that California remains at risk of
executing an innocent person. We recommended a series of reforms to
ensure that innocent people are not wrongfully convicted or sentenced
to death. The Legislature passed several of these measures, but the
governor vetoed them all, three years in a row.

Our commission also found a significant problem with poor quality
legal work in death penalty cases. We were shocked to learn that the
federal courts reverse two out of three death penalty cases because
of the poor performance of the attorneys. In too many cases, poor
people are ending up on death row because their lawyers do not have
the resources needed to properly investigate and defend the case.

How do we fix all of these problems? With money. Our commission
considered myriad measures to reform the state's death penalty system
and recommended several. If all of the reforms we recommended were
implemented, the state would reduce the risk of wrongful conviction
while still being able to process death penalty cases more quickly.

We currently pay $137 million each year for the state's dysfunctional
death penalty. Implementing our recommendations would cost an
additional $95 million, for a total price tag of $230 million each
year. Because it would take many years to increase the pace of review
of death penalty cases, we would still need to build a new facility
to house the people now on Death Row, at a cost of $400 million.

As Sen. Harmon stated, "California can't afford the dysfunctional
death penalty system in place." What he fails to disclose is that
California can't afford to fix it either.

We have an alternative, however. California can and should replace
the death penalty with the sentence of permanent imprisonment: life
with absolutely no possibility of parole. The past 30 years have
shown that permanent imprisonment succeeds where the death penalty
fails. It provides severe and certain punishment, ensuring that
dangerous people are off the streets. It also provides peace of mind
and finality to the family of murder victims, while the death penalty
drags them through decades of painful appeals. And, it would save the
state hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

It is time for the voters to fix this system: We should replace the
death penalty with permanent imprisonment.

Jon Streeter, Bill Hing and Diane Bellas served on the California
Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice. Streeter was vice-
chair of the commission and is a partner at the firm of Keker & Van
Nest. Hing is a professor at UC Davis School of Law. Bellas is the
public defender of Alameda County.

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This article appeared on page A - 13 of the San Francisco Chronicle