A recent investigation of California’s death penalty by the Associated Press found that the geographic location of a crime plays a significant role in whether a defendant receives the death penalty. California has the nation’s largest death row. A disproportionately high number of inmates are from places such as Kern, Riverside, and Shasta Counties, where prosecutors have voiced strong support for the death penalty and jurors have been more likely to support the sentence. On the other hand, in counties such as San Diego and San Francisco, prosecutors have been more reluctant to seek a death sentence. “I will never charge the death penalty,” said newly elected San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris in her inauguration speech in January 2004. Harris and other district attorneys who are more cautious in seeking capital convictions note that concerns about innocence and unfairness have led to their reluctance to seek death. Former San Diego District Attorney Paul Pfingst notes, “I was very cautious about the use of the death penalty. I demanded a very high degree of proof of guilt and a very high degree of evidence that death was the appropriate sentence.”
San Francisco, where jurors and prosecutors tend to be liberal, and Kern County, where conservatives hold sway, each have roughly 700,000 people. But San Francisco has just 1 person on death row, when statistically the norm is about 14. Kern County has 23 people awaiting execution, 10 more than the per capita norm. Riverside has the highest number of inmates per capita on death row, with 54. A statistically proportionate number would be slightly more than 30. The only county with more condemned inmates is Los Angeles, the state’s most populated, with 193, 11 more than expected under the state’s average ratio. (San Mateo Daily Journal, February 6, 2004) See California.