Entries tagged with “Jeff Rosen

Death Row

Feb 11, 2025

State Spotlight: California Death Row Shrinks Sharply in 2024, Driven by the Resentencing of At Least 45 People to Life Sentences or Less

When California Governor Gavin Newsom announced a mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions in 2019, he said that the state’s​“death penal­ty sys­tem has been, by all mea­sures, a fail­ure.” He explained that the death penal­ty​“has dis­crim­i­nat­ed against defen­dants who are men­tal­ly ill, Black and brown, or can’t afford expen­sive legal representation…[while pro­vid­ing] no pub­lic safe­ty ben­e­fit or val­ue as a deter­rent.” In 2024, California courts agreed that exe­cu­tion was not the…

Issues

Religion

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Apr 26, 2024

Federal Judge Orders Alameda County District Attorney to Review 35 Capital Cases Following Disclosure of Prosecutorial Misconduct in Jury Selection

On April 22, 2024, Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price announced that her office was ordered by a fed­er­al judge to review 35 death penal­ty con­vic­tions after the dis­clo­sure of evi­dence that sev­er­al pros­e­cu­tors inten­tion­al­ly exclud­ed Black and Jewish peo­ple from serv­ing on a cap­i­tal mur­der tri­al in 1995. In a press con­fer­ence, DA Price indi­cat­ed that her office dis­cov­ered the hand­writ­ten notes of for­mer pros­e­cu­tors that include dis­crim­i­na­to­ry jury selec­tion tac­tics, suggesting…

Issues

Apr 09, 2024

Santa Clara, California County District Attorney Requests Resentencing for County’s Entire Death Row

On April 5, 2024, Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen filed peti­tions ask­ing the coun­ty supe­ri­or court to resen­tence 15 death-sen­tenced men from his coun­ty to sen­tences of life in prison with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty for parole. These peti­tions were filed four years after DA Rosen announced his office would no longer seek the death penal­ty, a deci­sion part­ly in response to nation­wide calls for crim­i­nal legal reform fol­low­ing the mur­der of George Floyd. At the time, DA Rosen said that…