Former California Supreme Court Justice Joseph Grodin and for­mer San Quentin war­den Daniel Vasquez are urg­ing California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to grant clemen­cy to Clarence Ray Allen. Allen, who will turn 76 just a day before his sched­uled exe­cu­tion on January 17, is blind and dis­abled, con­di­tions that his attor­neys have argued would make his exe­cu­tion cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ment.

In a let­ter to Schwarzenegger, Grodin, who authored the court’s 1986 opin­ion uphold­ing Allen’s con­vic­tion and death sen­tence, stat­ed, “[T]he issue now — for you as gov­er­nor and for me as pri­vate cit­i­zen — is whether the exe­cu­tion of Mr. Allen would serve any legit­i­mate soci­etal inter­est in either ret­ri­bu­tion or deter­rence. My own judg­ment, con­sid­er­ing the time that has elapsed, the phys­i­cal suf­fer­ing that Mr. Allen has endured and the state’s like­ly involve­ment in that suf­fer­ing, is that it would not. On the con­trary, to exe­cute Mr. Allen now, under these con­di­tions, for a crime which he com­mit­ted more than a quar­ter cen­tu­ry ago, would itself vio­late soci­etal stan­dards of decen­cy.“

Vasquez, who was San Quentin’s war­den from 1983 to 1993, wrote in his let­ter to the gov­er­nor that Allen’s case is ​“an extra­or­di­nary one for which com­mu­ta­tion of his death sen­tence is war­rant­ed.” Stating that Allen ​“presents absolute­ly no risk to insti­tu­tion­al safe­ty or to pub­lic safe­ty,” Vasquez added, “[H]e is phys­i­cal­ly declined so dra­mat­i­cal­ly since his recep­tion on Death Row that he is phys­i­cal­ly inca­pac­i­tat­ed from pro­mot­ing any vio­lence. According to CDC [California Dept. of Corrections] records and my own obser­va­tions, he is ver­i­fi­ably blind and dis­abled.… He is an old man who has fall­en apart in almost every respect.”
(Inside Bay Area, December 29, 2005). See New Voices and Clemency.

Tags
Citation Guide