California ‘time-out’ on executions is stalled

A two-year moratorium—or “time-out”—on executions in California was delayed indefinitely on Jan. 19 when the Appropriations Committee of the State Legislature put Assembly Bill 1121 on hold.

The moratorium plan, first announced last June 14, was subsequently co-authored by Assembly members Paul Koretz, Sally Lieber, Mark Leno and Mervyn Dymally. At that time Koretz stated, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, that California stands “at grave risk of executing an innocent person.” Lieber said the death penalty is “quite infected with racism.” Mark Leno called it a “lethal lottery” riddled with “significant racial bias.”

At that initial announcement in June, six people wrongfully convicted of serious crimes in California and the parents of a young woman killed by a mentally disabled man all spoke in support of the moratorium plan.

Formally introduced this Jan. 9 by Koretz and Lieber, and signed by an additional 40 judges, prosecutors and other officials, AB 1121 was approved by the Assembly Public Safety Committee the next day. Koretz said, “There is no doubt that there are innocent people on death row right now in California.”

The legislation would have suspended all executions in California for two years, from January 2007 until January 2009. But partisan politics and lack of moral backbone, at least until after elections, stalled the measure. Had it passed, it would have allowed time for the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice, a bipartisan committee established a year ago by the California State Senate, to carry out a comprehensive study of the state’s legal procedures, including the effectiveness, accuracy and fairness of capital punishment as it is carried out here.

Also there would have been time for the state legislature to review the commission’s findings and recommendations. Koretz is quoted by the organization Cali fornians for a Moratorium on Executions as saying, “For the state of California to continue to execute prisoners while an official governmental body investigates the findings of error and injustice and unfairness in the criminal justice system just doesn’t make sense.”

Another group, Death Penalty Focus (DPF), says that the commission is empowered “to study the extent to which California’s criminal justice system has failed in the past, resulting in wrongful executions or wrongful convictions of innocent persons” and examine ways of providing safeguards and making improvements in the way the criminal justice system functions” in the largest state in the country.

Not surprisingly, race is a major determining factor in the decision of who lives and who dies in California’s prisons. For example, on Dec. 13, Stanley Tookie Williams, an African American, was executed amid local, statewide and national protests. Clarence Ray Allen, a Native American, was executed on Jan. 17. And on Feb. 21, Michael Morales, a Latino, is also scheduled to die in California’s death chamber at San Quentin Prison.

The racism is so obvious that a 1990 federal General Accounting Office report said that “in 82 percent of studies [reviewed], race of the victim was found to influence the likelihood of being charged with capital murder or receiving the death penalty, i.e., those who murdered whites were more likely to be sentenced to death than those who murdered blacks.”

Illinois Gov. George Ryan declared a moratorium on executions in his state when a student research paper revealed evidence that at least 13 innocent people were on Illinois’ death row.

More than 100 convicted individuals across the country have been found to be innocent and released from death row. The mistaken or wrongful execution of anyone is an act of brutality that can never be rectified.

New Jersey and Maryland have imposed moratoria on executions.

Even better, Kansas and New York have declared capital punishment unconstitutional. The death penalty is a weapon of terror, used disproportionately against the poor and people of color.

But in 38 states, including California, the death penalty remains legal.

While at least 117 countries worldwide have abandoned capital punishment in law, or at least in practice, the U.S. remains in the small group of nations where over half the states are still licensed to kill. California Gov. Arnold “The Terminator” Schwarzenegger, a death penalty enthusiast, is not expected to sign any anti-death penalty legislation that reaches his desk until he is forced to.

But the growing number of death penalty opponents are heartened that more than 170,000 Californians, some 425 organizations, all the big newspapers, 11 city councils and four counties in California have all supported the suspension of executions.

The struggle to end the very real “crime against humanity” executions of the more than 640 men and women now on Cali fornia’s death row will continue. Those of us on the “outside” can do no less.