A recent Los Angeles Times editorial called on California lawmakers to impose a moratorium on executions until a state commission charged with examining the fairness and accuracy of California’s death penalty laws can finish its work. The paper noted that a similar review led by New York state lawmakers resulted in findings that effectively ended capital punishment in that state for this year. The editorial stated:
Many Californians, lawmakers as well as voters, share those concerns (as expressed in New York) about fairness and fallibility. They worry as well about the inequalities that riddle the death penalty in a state as large and diverse as ours.
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This state has the nation’s largest death row, with 640 inmates. So large, in fact, that taxpayers pony up $114 million every year to house them at San Quentin, on top of the extra costs to prosecute them and provide for required appeals. The state’s condemned population is so large in part because voters and lawmakers have allowed prosecutors to seek death sentences in more circumstances than allowed in most other states.
That latitude has produced glaring disparities. Wealthy (and often white) defendants who can afford experienced lawyers end up at San Quentin less often than poor defendants (often Latino or African American) who are stuck with lawyers assigned by the county. Prosecutors in some conservative, rural counties more readily ask juries for death than those in many urban counties. In some counties, prosecutors haven’t tried a capital case in years.
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State lawmakers last year chartered a commission to examine capital punishment with an eye toward recommending reforms. That panel expects to begin its research and deliberations in the coming months. A moratorium … should be among its first actions.
(Los Angeles Times, April 21, 2005). See Editorials and Recent Legislative Activities.
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