Entries tagged with “Pamela Price

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

May 09, 2024

Articles of Interest: Los Angeles Times Editorial Board Says Systemic Racism in California Death Penalty Is Just One of Many Reasons for Abolition

In a May 7, 2024 edi­to­r­i­al, the Los Angeles Times Editorial Board cites the deeply engrained racial dis­par­i­ties in the California death penal­ty sys­tem and how those facts led them to con­clude that even if the state could per­form pain­less and anx­i­ety-free exe­cu­tions and racial bias­es were elim­i­nat­ed, the death penal­ty would still be wrong.” Black defen­dants were 4.6 to 8.7 times more like­ly to be sen­tenced to death than oth­er defen­dants fac­ing sim­i­lar charges” the Board notes, and Latinos…

Issues

Religion

,

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…