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Two California Supreme Court justices against capital punishment

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Two California Supreme Court justices have joined the debate against capital punishment.

“California’s death penalty is an expensive and dysfunctional system that does not deliver justice or closure in a timely manner, if at all,” Justice Goodwin Liu wrote in a published opinion.

The opinion upheld the death sentence of Thomas Potts, convicted of two murders in 1998. Liu’s opinion was cosigned by Justice Mariano-Florentino Cuellar, the San Francisco Chronicle reported March 28.

Liu noted the California execution moratorium imposed by Gov. Gavin Newsom and said it should be a signal for a renewed examination of capital punishment.

Justice Goodwin Liu wrote that he has voted to affirm many death sentences and would “continue to do so when the law requires,” reported the San Francisco Chronicle.

Liu wrote,” I express no view here on the morality or constitutionality of the death penalty,” then derided “the promise of justice in our death penalty system” as “a promise that California has been unable to keep.” He also said the 2016 Proposition 66 initiative aimed at speeding up executions “promised more than the system can deliver.”

Proposition 66, upheld by the courts, limited prisoner appeals and prohibition on regulatory review of one- drug lethal injections. But then the courts rejected its five-year deadline for deciding appeals in state court as being unfeasible and unconstitutional. Liu said the ballot measure’s goal could not be met unless California devotes “considerable additional resources to its judicial branch.”

The opinions were challenged by Kent Scheidegger, a death penalty advocate and legal director of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation in Sacramento. He said other states handle death penalty appeals faster and less expensively, California could follow their example by limiting successive appeals.

Pending in the state Legislature is a measure that would place another death penalty repeal on the November 2020 ballot. A poll by the Public Policy Institute found 62 % of adults surveyed said they would prefer a life-without-parole sentence instead of death for first-degree murder.

Former Chief Justice Ronald George said in his 2013 memoir that the death penalty system “places the ad- ministration of justice… in a very bad light” because of its costs, delays and overall ineffectiveness.

After the governor of Washington declared a moratorium on executions, the state’s Supreme Court struck down Washington’s death penalty law on the grounds it was used in an arbitrary and racially discriminatory manner.

Iranian legal reforms reduce executions

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Capital punishment in Iran has roughly been cut in half because of drug law reform, a human rights organization reports.

Executions in Iran have also been cut in half after historic law reforms, according to Human Rights Watch and Harm Reduction International.

Iran had 225 executions in 2018, of which 91 were for drug offenses. In 2017, there were 507 executions, according to a March 17 story in Current Events.

The decrease in drug- related executions is due to new amendments in drug laws, which were motivated in part by international pressure and grassroots efforts.

Chief Justice Larijani’s judicial order in 2018 initiated a review process for all drug offenders on Death Row, possibly to commute execution sentences under the newly changed standards. Iran’s Drug Control Headquarters reported 3,000-4000 sentences would be commuted.

“Non-governmental organizations (in Iran) are key partners in implementing drug treatment programs… Their constant efforts and lobbying have helped political and religious authorities to adopt new approaches to tackling the drug problem,” according to a report by the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime.

Former U.N. Human Rights Chief Ra’ad Al Hussein called on Iran to “institute a moratorium on the use of the death penalty” because he said capital punishment is inhumane and irreversible.

The drug epidemic and the death penalty had risen throughout the decades following the 1979 Islamic Revolution when religious and governmental officials drew a hard line against drug addiction. The result: hundreds were arrested and executed each year, according to the story.

“International law requires not only the reducing of, but ideally the elimination of, the use of the death penalty for drug offenses in Iran,” according to Harm Reduction International. It claimed low level drug of- fenders are still being executed.

India adopts capital punishment for child rape under twelve

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In April, India passed a law permitting the death penalty for rape of a child under 12, reigniting an international debate over capital punishment.
In India, only four people have been executed in the past 13 years. Three of those executed were convicted of terrorism and one for rape of a minor, Chaitanya Mallapur reported for the Business Standard News.
Sentence
Of the 109 prisoners sentenced to death in 2017, 43 people (39 percent) were sentenced to death for murder involving sexual violence. Now, India is the 14th country to introduce capital punishment for child rape without an additional murder charge. Despite this law change, the use of capital punishment remains a contentious issue worldwide.
Execution
“Execution kills the criminal, not the crime,” said Ap Singh, a lawyer for two of the convicts set for execution in India. “How can judiciary decide as to who should live and who should die?”
India faces long delays in its trial process. Even after being sentenced, prisoners face years on death row before they are executed.
It takes so long to execute a prisoner because the conviction is sent to the High Court for confirmation. Then, after the High Court confirms the verdict, it can be appealed to the Supreme Court. A prisoner can also file mercy petitions with the governor and the president.
Appeal
According to the Law Commission of India 2015 report on the death penalty death row prisoners continue to face long delays in trials, appeals and thereafter in clemency. The report states that during this time, the prisoners on death row suffer from extreme agony, anxiety and fear arising out of imminent yet uncertain timing of their executions.
Human rights groups and the United Nations argue that the death sentence is inhumane and cruel, Mallapur reports. The primary argument in favor is that it deters people from committing crimes in the first place. Many, including India’s Law Commission, disagree, saying that the threat of capital punishment doesn’t stop criminals from committing crimes.

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Tennessee schedules three executions

Republicans aim to end America’s death penalty

Republicans aim to end America’s death penalty

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The death penalty is dying in the United States, and surprisingly, a large number of Republicans are contributing to its demise, according to a report examining legislative attempts to end capital punishment.

The report by Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty, a group dedicated to exposing conservative opposition to capital punishment, said lawmakers across the country are actively lobbying their colleagues to repeal such legislation.

In 2016 and 2017, “dozens of Republican lawmakers sponsored death penalty repeal bills. In fact, during these two years, Republicans constituted around a third of all sponsors of death penalty repeal bills in state legislatures,” the report said. “As these data show, death penalty repeal efforts are becoming more bipartisan in many states.”

In January 2000, then Illinois Gov. George Ryan, a Republican, imposed the nation’s first state-based moratorium on executions. “This set off a wave of increased scrutiny and institutional opposition to the death penalty,” the report said, adding that New Hampshire’s Republican-controlled legislature voted to repeal the death penalty, only to have its Democratic governor veto the measure.

Despite historical GOP support for capital punishment, “some of the biggest death sentencing drops occurred in reliably red states like Texas, Oklahoma, Alabama and Louisiana,” the report said.

The report also pointed out that the death penalty process has been plagued by wrongful convictions, high costs, and delays. It argued that capital punishment has proven to be ineffective and incompatible with a number of core conservative principles because sentencing a person to death has overstepped conservative commitments to limited government, fiscal responsibility, and a culture of life.

The death penalty has many flaws, according to critics, who point to the risk of executing an innocent person, arbitrariness, racial bias, high costs, a lack of evidence of its deterrent effect on crime, and the impact on executed persons’ families. Conservatives say these side effects are incompatible with their values.

The report concluded, “Conservatives from the grassroots to statehouses are taking note and leading the way toward better policies that don’t include executions.”

States seeking lethal injection cocktails from black market


https://sanquentinnews.com/californias-next-governor-may-face-pending-executions/

Capital Punishment Losing Ground in Public Support