Governor Gavin Newson

Gavin Newsom will introduce a broader criminal justice reform

February 13, 2020 by Harry C. Goodall Jr.

Gov. Gavin Newsom will introduce a broader criminal justice reform package as part of his 2020 prison budget plan.

His plans include step down facilities that focus on rehabilitation and reentry options for people being released from custody. He ultimately wants to shut down one of the state’s 35 prisons, according to an article in the Sacramento Bee.

Governor Newsom’s plans are to give the state more power to oversee local sheriffs and lock up facilities. This is possibly due to California’s surge in homicides in some of its largest jails. He has sighted that inmates are held in inhumane suicide watch conditions monitored by lo- cal sheriffs, who rebuff state inspectors, according to the article.

“I’m generally not satisfied with oversight, period. Across the board,” Newsom said on the state’s supervision of the 70,000 inmates housed in county jails. “There’s not a lot of accountability and over- sight in terms of these issues and county jails.”

Governor Newsom’s ad- ministration is studying what changes could be made, but offered no specifics as to what changes will be made as of yet. Governor Newsom’s spokes- person said the governor will announce what changes will be made in January when he reveals his state budget.

There was a yearlong investigation by McClatchy and ProPublica, which exposed that county jails have struggled with the influx of inmates serving longer sentences after the 2011 series of reforms that included a measure that shifted inmates from the state prison system to serving their sentences in local county jails. This was due to the state declaring that California prisons are unconstitutionally over-crowded, according to the article.

“I’m generally not satisfied with oversight, period. Across the board,”

California lawmakers created the California Board of State and Community Corrections to oversee the burden of realignment. Their role was to increase funding for facility construction. The news agencies found the committee “toothless,” according to the article. Some of the reasoning was that the committee did not monitor jail deaths.

“State corrections officials do not have the authority to make county leaders change, and they generally see them- selves as partners, not regulators,” said Allison Ganter, deputy director overseeing the inspection team,

When the homicide rate soared in these facilities, the committee could not force counties to construct new or safer facilities. This was even after billions of dollars had been awarded in state financing to replace decrepit facilities.

Fresno County jail has experienced 47 deaths since the realignment program was instituted. This is twice the number of people who had died in the several years prior to realignment.

A bill has been introduced by Assembly member Kevin McCarty, D-Sacramento. This bill would allow counties to create oversight groups with the power to subpoena county sheriffs but was shelved after opposition from local law enforcement. McCarty has vowed to re-submit another version of the bill next year.

The state corrections board cited Kern County’s jail due to suicidal inmates being locked in closet-sized rooms with nothing but a grate in the floor. These inmates were given a rip resistant yoga mat to sleep on. After incidents the jail switched to giving the suicide watch inmates blankets, according to the Sacramento Bee article.

McCarty said this is yet another example of mental health abuses, negligence and lack of proper oversight by a county sheriff’s department.

“This type of lax oversight results in lawsuits and settlements where taxpayers continue to foot the bill and pay for the misconduct of our sheriff’s departments across California.”

Newsom’s stance on death penalty inspires abolitionist movement

February 13, 2020 by kerry rudd

Governor Newsom’s moratorium on the death penalty in March gave California’s abolition movement new energy.

“There’s this excitement and energy in our movement that we haven’t had in a long time,” said Natasha Minsker, a political consultant and longtime proponent for abolishing capital punishment.

“Grappling with the legacy of their two failed initiatives, advocates are re- assessing their strategy and retooling their message,” said a recent SF Chronicle article. “The governor’s moratorium has given advocates the opportunity to do long-term planning.”

Newsom’s moratorium provided temporary reprieves to more than 730 inmates who sit stationed on San Quentin’s Death Row. The moratorium also removed California’s recently revised lethal injection procedures.

Because the court had recently approved the state’s new lethal injection protocol, Newsom was faced with the reality of overseeing the executions of more than 20 inmates who had exhausted their appeals. The governor said he was not willing to let that scenario happen.

Prior to Newsom’s decision, no one had been executed in California since a federal judge ruled in 2006 that the state’s methods resulted in potentially torturous and painful deaths to condemned prisoners.

Newsom’s moratorium places California’s capital punishment system back into a legal standstill.

Following Newsom’s stand, the efforts of many activists have now been directed to the national stage, where the Trump administration is planning to resume capital punishment.

Three federal executions were scheduled for December before a judge temporarily blocked them. These would have been the first death sentences carried out by the U.S. Government in 16 years.

Governor Gavin Newsom appoints new players in three key CDCR positions

June 25, 2019 by Salvador Solorio

Gov. Gavin Newsom announced in late March three key appointments for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR). All three appointments require Senate confirmation. His appointments include a Republican, a Democrat and a person without political affiliation.

Ralph Diaz has been appointed Secretary of the CDCR. He began his corrections career as a CO at Wasco State Prison in 1991. He worked multiple jobs as counselor supervisor, captain, chief deputy administrator and warden of the California Substance Abuse Treatment Facility and State Prison at Corcoran. He then served as associate director of high security institutions for the CDCR, and later as the deputy director of facility operations. He was undersecretary for operations and then acting secretary prior to his appointment to secretary of CDCR. The secretary’s compensation is $265,920 per year. Politically Diaz is without party affiliation.

Undersecretary of operations of CDCR Kathleen Allison

Kathleen Allison has been appointed undersecretary of operations for the CDCR. Her career began with the CDCR as a medical technical assistant at North Kern State Prison in 1993. She is a licensed registered nurse. While working at Avenal State Prison she worked as community resources man- ager, senior medical technical assistant and medical technical assistant. While at the California Substance Abuse Treatment Facility and State Prison at Corcoran, she served as warden, chief deputy warden, associate warden and correctional health services administrator. She was the director of the CDCR’s Division of Adult Institutions from 2016 to 2018, and she has served as Acting Undersecretary of Operations since 2018. Her yearly compensation is $189,456. Allison is Republican.

Connie Gipson was appointed director of adult institutions for the CDCR. She began her corrections career at the California Institution for Women in 1988 . She then worked at Wasco State Prison as captain, business manager and health program director. While at California State Prison at Corcoran she served as warden, acting warden and chief deputy warden. She then worked as the CDCR’s associate director of general population male offenders and as deputy director of facility operations. She has been the acting director of adult institutions since 2018. Her yearly compensation is $174,344. Gipson is a Democrat.

Two California Supreme Court justices against capital punishment

June 24, 2019 by Salvador Solorio

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.