Santa Clara DA Announces Office Will No Longer Pursue Death Penalty

After four unsuc­cess­ful attempts to impose the death penal­ty over the past decade and what he described as a trans­for­ma­tive vis­it to the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama, Santa Clara County, California District Attorney Jeff Rosen (pic­tured) has announced that his office will no longer seek the death penalty. 

The announce­ment was the cli­max of a high­ly pro­mot­ed ​“Bend the Arc” media brief­ing on July 22, 2020 at which Rosen announced a series of major social jus­tice reforms in his office’s train­ing and pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al prac­tices. In addi­tion to his pol­i­cy change on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, Rosen said his office will seek alter­na­tives to incar­cer­a­tion, stop press­ing crim­i­nal charges for minor offens­es and bur­den­ing indi­gent defen­dants with fines and court fees, end cash bail, and facil­i­tate post-con­vic­tion reen­try by auto­mat­i­cal­ly expung­ing crim­i­nal records of those who suc­cess­ful­ly com­plete pro­ba­tion. Rosen also said he would estab­lish a law enforce­ment integri­ty unit in his office to help ​“police the police” and cre­ate an inter­nal list of police offi­cers whose past mis­con­duct and sus­pect­ed false tes­ti­mo­ny under­mines the reli­a­bil­i­ty of their arrests and the cred­i­bil­i­ty of their testimony.

The sweep­ing changes by a dis­trict attor­ney who had been regard­ed as a ​“tough-on-crime” pros­e­cu­tor came in response to the nation­wide calls to address racial injus­tice in the legal sys­tem trig­gered by the mur­der of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis. ​“It has changed our coun­try and our com­mu­ni­ty,” Rosen said. ​“It has changed my office. It has changed me.”

Santa Clara County is one of the 2% of U.S. coun­ties that col­lec­tive­ly account for more than half of the entire U.S. death row. A DPIC study in 2013 found that it had the 17^th largest death row of any U.S. coun­ty, with 28 pris­on­ers — more than were on death row in 99.4% of U.S. counties.

As recent­ly as 2019, Rosen told the San Jose Mercury News that he ​“respect­ful­ly disagree[d]” with those who believe ​“that the death penal­ty is wrong. … [I] think there are a very small num­ber of indi­vid­u­als that have com­mit­ted such hor­ren­dous crimes that the appro­pri­ate response from a civ­i­lized soci­ety is to exe­cute them,” he said. But in his remarks at the news con­fer­ence, he said his views had been trans­formed by vis­its with his fam­i­ly and faith groups to the Equal Justice Initiative’s lynch­ing memo­r­i­al and Legacy Museum, which traces the U.S. path from slav­ery to mass incar­cer­a­tion. At the news con­fer­ence, Rosen cred­it­ed that expe­ri­ence with open­ing his eyes to ​“the abhor­rent mis­use of the death penal­ty” against peo­ple of color.

Rosen also cit­ed the finan­cial and emo­tion­al costs of the death penal­ty as part of his rea­son­ing for end­ing pur­suit of the death penal­ty. ​“These cas­es use up mas­sive pub­lic resources,” he said, and the appeals process — which in California lags for decades — ​“give[s] no final­i­ty to the vic­tims’ fam­i­lies.” he ​“With every exon­er­a­tion and sto­ry of racial injus­tice,” Rosen said, it became clear that the legal sys­tem could not ​“ensure the fun­da­men­tal fair­ness of the process.”

“[S]hamefully,” Rosen said, ​“our society’s most dras­tic and dev­as­tat­ing law enforce­ment pun­ish­ment has been used dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly against defen­dants of color.”

Law reform advo­cates laud­ed Rosen’s announce­ment. ​“I think the dis­trict attor­ney is tak­ing a bold, clear stance that the death penal­ty is not moral­ly defen­si­ble,” Santa Clara University law pro­fes­sor and death-penal­ty expert Ellen Kreitzberg told San José Spotlight. Kreitzberg said she hoped Rosen ​“will be able to take some lead­er­ship on this and bring some oth­er thought­ful dis­trict attor­neys to that same position.”

LaDoris Cordell, a retired Santa Clara County judge who has become an advo­cate for pro­gres­sive crim­i­nal legal reform, praised the deci­sion but urged Rosen to ​“take the next step” and move to resen­tence the county’s death-row pris­on­ers to life with­out parole. ​“The arc of jus­tice bends to them, too,” she said.

25 peo­ple sen­tenced to death in Santa Clara County are cur­rent­ly on California’s death row.