California is taking steps to resume executions while voters are deciding whether to abolish capital punishment in November.
Gov. Jerry Brown ordered prison officials to clear hurdles allowing the single-drug execution option after courts banned the three-drug combination that critics claimed caused unnecessary pain.
Meanwhile, the man who spearheaded the expansion of capital punishment in California is now backing a new initiative to repeal it. “When I wrote (the expansion law), I believed in capital punishment,” Donald Heller said in a Los Angeles Times interview.
Heller is the author of the 1978 initiative that broadened the umbrella of crimes eligible for the death penalty.
Brown’s directive was part of a notice of appeal filed by Attorney General Kamala D. Harris seeking to activate capital punishment. “My administration is working to ensure that California’s laws on capital punishment are upheld,” Brown’s office responded when asked about the directive.
California’s capital punishment procedure has come under increased scrutiny. Critics cite a system marred by lengthy appeals, leaving those convicted to death to spend decades on San Quentin’s Death Row, costing the state hundreds of millions of dollars. However, Heller’s change of heart seems rooted more in morality than it does the cost.
He told the LA Times that he “started noticing the toll it took on judges pronouncing a sentence of death,” and that there have been aggressive prosecutions of defendants by prosecutors seeking death. “It became, with some, a game,” he said.
If approved by voters in November, the 700-plus men and women condemned to die would have their sentences converted to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.
On another front, the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation filed a petition with the State Court of Appeal attempting to resume executions. The conservative law and order foundation noted nearly two dozen executions have been conducted in three other states using a single-drug.
In addition, Los Angeles District Attorney Steve Cooley filed court papers, attempting to get an order for the execution of Mitchell Carleton Sims, 52, and Tiequon Aundray Cox, 46 by a single-drug method.
The latest report on the effectiveness of the death penalty found that its deterrent factor is unknown, because of the lack of comprehensive data collection and the failure to ask the right questions to those who commit murder.
The report, funded by The Research Counsel of the National Academies, Deterrence and the Death Penalty. It concluded that in the 30 years of studying capital punishment and its potential effects on homicide rates, all of the studies contain the same flaws.
All previous studies fail to include the effects of other forms of punishment—such as life in prison without possibility of parole, the report said. They do not consider whether potential murderers think about the possibility of spending their lives in prison or ending up on Death Row before they commit their crimes. The report pointed out, it is difficult to determine the death penalty’s deterrent factor in crimes committed in the heat of passion, or under a diminished capacity.
“We recognize this conclusion will be controversial to some, but nobody is well-served by unfounded claims about the death penalty,” said Daniel Nagin, chairman of the report.
The report concludes that research has consistently failed to determine whether capital punishment decreases, increases or has no effect on homicide rates.
The report says researchers may find answers to the deterrence of the death penalty by asking:
Whether the legal status of the death penalty affects homicide rates
If the intensity of use of the death penalty affects homicide rates
How executions affect homicide rates in the short run.
The report issued the following recommendations:
Collecting data required for a complete consideration of capital and non-capital punishment for murder
Conducting studies on how potential murders perceive capital punishment as a penalty for murder
Use methods that make credible assumptions about the effect of capital punishment.
– Aly Tamboura, Juan Haines, and Charles David Henry contributed to this story.
