OUTLIER COUNTIES: Riverside County, ​“The Buckle of a New Death Belt”

Riverside County, California imposed more death sen­tences than any oth­er coun­ty in the United States in 2015, account­ing for more than half of the state’s new death sen­tences and 16% of new death sen­tences imposed nation­wide. Among oth­er states, only the 9 death sen­tences imposed in Florida out­stripped Riverside’s total of 8. 

The 29 death sen­tences imposed in Riverside from 2010 – 2015 made it the nation’s sec­ond most pro­lif­ic death-sen­tenc­ing coun­ty dur­ing that peri­od, behind only the coun­try’s most pop­u­lous death-penal­ty coun­ty, Los Angeles, which has five times as many homi­cides. While California imposed more death sen­tences than any oth­er state dur­ing that peri­od, Riverside stood out even among California coun­ties, impos­ing death sen­tences at a rate that was 9 times greater per homi­cide than the rest of the state. 

A 2015 piece by Professor Robert J. Smith of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill called Riverside County, ​“the buck­le of a new Death Belt,” because it, along with four oth­er south­ern California coun­ties, had replaced the Deep South in over­pro­duc­ing death sen­tences. Those five coun­ties, which also include Kern, Orange, Los Angeles, and San Bernadino, have received nation­al atten­tion for mis­con­duct by pros­e­cu­tors and oth­er pub­lic offi­cials. In 2011, a fed­er­al mag­is­trate judge char­ac­ter­ized the con­duct of the Riverside County District Attorney’s office as, ​“turn[ing] a blind eye to fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ples of jus­tice,” in a murder case. 

As with many of the coun­ties that pro­duce dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly large num­bers of death sen­tences, Riverside also faces oth­er seri­ous crim­i­nal jus­tice prob­lems. The office has been the sub­ject of an inves­ti­ga­tion into alleged­ly ille­gal wire­tap­ping prac­tices, after for­mer DA Paul Zellerbach over­saw what The Desert Sun news­pa­per described as ​“an astro­nom­i­cal rise in wire­taps” that was ​“so vast it once account­ed for near­ly a fifth of all U.S. wire­taps,” includ­ing triple the num­ber of wire­taps issued by any oth­er state or fed­er­al juris­dic­tion in 2014. Riverside police ranked 9^th in the nation in killings of civil­ians.

The death sen­tences imposed in the coun­ty also exhib­it sig­nif­i­cant racial dis­par­i­ties. 76% of those sen­tenced to death in Riverside between 2010 and 2015 were defen­dants of color. 

Defendants in Riverside County often receive inad­e­quate defense because of a pay struc­ture for court-appoint­ed attor­neys that finan­cial­ly penal­izes plea bar­gains and robust inves­ti­ga­tion of mit­i­gat­ing evi­dence. In two-thirds of Riverside County cas­es that were reviewed on direct appeal between 2006 and 2015, defense coun­sel pre­sent­ed less than two days of mit­i­ga­tion. Among that same group of cas­es, 55% involved a defen­dant who was under 21 years old at the time of the offense or had an intel­lec­tu­al impair­ment, brain dam­age, or severe men­tal ill­ness. 7 of the 8 defen­dants sent to death row in 2015 were rep­re­sent­ed by appoint­ed pri­vate coun­sel. Only one was rep­re­sent­ed by the pub­lic defend­er’s office. (Click to enlarge image.)