OUTLIER COUNTIES: San Bernardino, California Shares Problematic Patterns of Neighboring Counties

San Bernardino County, California is one of five Southern California coun­ties that have pro­duced more death sen­tences since 2010 than 99.5% of all U.S. coun­ties. Along with its neigh­bors, Kern County, Riverside County, Orange County, and Los Angeles County, San Bernardino forms a ​“new Death Belt,” a region with high num­bers of death sen­tences marked by overzeal­ous pros­e­cu­tors and poor rep­re­sen­ta­tion for defen­dants fac­ing a death sentence. 

In January 2013, San Bernardino had 37 pris­on­ers on death row, mak­ing it the 11^th largest death row in the coun­try. It has a death sen­tenc­ing rate 40% high­er than the California aver­age. According to the Fair Punishment Project, ​“A review of direct appeals from the past decade reveals that the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s office has con­tin­u­ous­ly sought the death penal­ty for very young adults, indi­vid­u­als with men­tal ill­ness, and an indi­vid­ual who was con­vict­ed of cap­i­tal mur­der even though he was not the triggerman.” 

District Attorney Mike Ramos has said that min­i­mum com­pe­ten­cy require­ments for cap­i­tal appeals attor­neys are ​“ridicu­lous” and ​“a delay tac­tic,” but his­to­ry shows that inad­e­quate coun­sel has been a seri­ous prob­lem in San Bernardino for decades. 

S. Donald Ames, who has rep­re­sent­ed four men sen­tenced to death in San Bernardino, told the jury in one tri­al that, ​“exe­cu­tion would help” defen­dant Melvin Wade. At the tri­al of Richard Gamache, who was 18 at the time of the crime for which he was being tried, Ames said, “[If] you intend to kill some­body, what the hell dif­fer­ence does it make how young you are?” The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit described his rep­re­sen­ta­tion of Demetrie Mayfield as ​“deplorable,” unan­i­mous­ly over­turn­ing Mayfield’s 1983 death sen­tence when Ames had billed only 40 hours in prepa­ra­tion for both the guilt and penal­ty phas­es of tri­al and had his first and only sub­stan­tive meet­ing with Mayfield the morn­ing the trial began. 

Another court-appoint­ed lawyer, Michael Belter, who has had at least 15 clients sent to death row across four Southern California coun­ties, pre­sent­ed less than 2 days of mit­i­gat­ing evi­dence at the tri­al of Rickie Lee Fowler, who was con­vict­ed of start­ing a brush fire that result­ed in 5 deaths. Abundant mit­i­ga­tion evi­dence was avail­able for Fowler, who had been sex­u­al­ly molest­ed by a neigh­bor, phys­i­cal­ly abused and neglect­ed as a child, and intro­duced to metham­phet­a­mines by his father when he was only 8 years old. 

Statistics from San Bernardino cap­i­tal cas­es also exhib­it strong race-of-vic­tim bias. About 82% of vic­tims in the coun­ty’s 14 cap­i­tal cas­es decid­ed on appeal between 2006 and 2015 were White, as com­pared to mur­der sta­tis­tics show­ing that only 13% of the coun­ty’s homi­cide vic­tims in 2013 were White.