On March 6, several stakeholders in California’s death penalty system filed supportive briefs urging the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit to uphold a District Court ruling that the state’s death penalty is unconstitutional. The 9th Circuit is considering the state’s appeal in the case of Ernest Jones, whose death sentence was overturned by Judge Cormac Carney (pictured). In an amicus brief on behalf of Jones, Bethany Webb, whose sister was murdered in 2011, said, “California’s death penalty is a charade. My sister’s killer is going to die of old age before an execution will ever be carried out. The death penalty retraumatizes families like mine and forces them to endure a decades-long cycle of waiting, court hearings, and uncertainty. It is cruel to continue propping up a system that encourages victims’ families to wait decades for an execution that may never come.” State legislators and legal scholars also filed briefs in the case. Senator Mark Leno, joined by other state legislators, wrote, “The facts are overwhelmingly clear: California’s death penalty system is broken and clearly there’s no political will to try to address the many flaws that plague the system. The death penalty is exorbitantly costly, arbitrarily applied, and serves no legitimate purpose whatsoever in its current condition. The only reasonable solution is to replace the death penalty with life in prison without the possibility of parole.”
(K. Puente, “Death penalty gains unlikely foes: Victims’ families urge courts to strike down state law,” Orange County Register, March 5, 2015; see also Press Release from Ernest Jones’ Attorneys). See New Voices and Victims.
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