In California, fam­i­lies of mur­der vic­tims Amber Dubois and Chelsea King agreed to a life sen­tence with­out parole for the girls’ killer, John Albert Gardner. Brent King, Chelsea’s father, said that agree­ing with County District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis’ deci­sion not to seek the death penal­ty for his daugth­er’s killer was tor­tur­ous,” but so would have been a death penal­ty tri­al and the years of appeals that fol­low. Dumanis said there was enough evi­dence to con­vict Gardner for Chelsea’s mur­der, but she agreed to a life sen­tence with­out parole in exchange for Gardner’s con­fes­sion because it was the only way to con­vict him of Amber’s death and to find her body. In explain­ing this dif­fi­cult deci­sion, the dis­trict attor­ney called California’s death penal­ty a hollow promise.”

Since the state rein­stat­ed the death penal­ty in 1978, more death row inmates (72) have died from nat­ur­al caus­es, sui­cide or oth­er rea­sons than by exe­cu­tion (13). On aver­age, California’s death row inmates have spent 17 years on death row. Some, like David Westerfield, wait­ed years before the state appoint­ed them legal rep­re­sen­ta­tion for their ini­tial appeal. It took the state five years to appoint an attor­ney to rep­re­sent Westerfield in his auto­mat­ic appeal to the state’s Supreme Court.

Dumanis said that get­ting a guilty plea from Gardner spared Amber and Chelsea’s fam­i­lies the pain of tri­al and post-con­vic­tion appeals, and years of suf­fer­ing. Among the rea­sons for agree­ing to life impris­on­ment with­out parole in Gardner’s case, Brent King cit­ed the need for Amber’s fam­i­ly to have clo­sure, as well as the need to pro­tect his teenage son from years of fur­ther trau­ma. He said, While our unequiv­o­cal first choice is the death penal­ty, we acknowl­edge that in California that penal­ty has become an empty promise.”

(T. Figueroa and M. Walker, State’s death penal­ty lacks urgency,” North County Times, April 17, 2010). See also Arbitrariness and Victims.

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