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 America's most populous state, which has not carried out an
execution in a decade, begins 2016 at a pivotal juncture, as legal
developments hasten the march toward resuming executions, while
opponents seek to end the death penalty at the ballot box.
"There's no truth in sentencing in this state," said Sacramento
County prosecutor Anne Marie Schubert, who favors speeding up
executions. "We have to make a decision on what we're going to do."
This month, the state is holding a hearing on a proposed new
protocol for lethal injection that would use one drug, a
barbiturate, to put condemned inmates to death, rather than a
three-drug cocktail declared unconstitutional by a California court
10 years ago because it could possibly cause pain.
Death penalty opponents are gathering signatures to place a measure
on the November ballot that would outlaw the death penalty in the
state. At the same time, supporters of capital punishment are
seeking support for an initiative to speed up the execution process.
“California has a history of driving the car in both directions at
the same time,” said Robert Dunham, executive director of the Death
Penalty Information Center, which documents U.S. death penalty
cases.
California's conflicting choices on the death penalty come as
support for capital punishment wanes across the United States. They
reflect the tangled political climate in a state where voters have
repeatedly endorsed capital punishment even as top officials have
come to oppose it.
The result is a situation in which execution remains a choice for
juries and is favored by many prosecutors, but where there is little
political will to enforce the sentences.
California juries have sentenced nearly 900 people to death since
1978, but only 13 have been executed. Sixty-eight have died of
natural causes, 36 more for other reasons.
Of the 751 remaining inmates, most of them housed at San Quentin,
seven have been on death row since the 1970s. Three are more than 80
years old. A row of wheelchairs sits across from the tiers of cells
in the prison's East Block.
The death chamber sits unused despite an $850,000 court-ordered
remodel. Anticipating more convictions, officials in coming weeks
will open a new death-row wing. The state has constructed an
in-patient psychiatric hospital to handle the needs of death-row
inmates.
San Quentin's warden, Ronald Davis, took the job a year ago focused
more on the rehabilitation and education programs offered at the
state prison than its role as a facility for executions.
"If I have to preside over one, I would try to view it as part of my
job and step up to the responsibility," Davis said.
DWINDLING SUPPORT
Last year, U.S. states conducted 28 executions - the fewest since
1991 - and imposed the lowest number of death sentences since 1978,
said Dunham.
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A majority of Americans, about 56 percent, still support the death
penalty, the lowest number in 40 years, a poll conducted last year
by the Pew Research Center showed.
Helping drive the change are the success of DNA testing and advocacy
by groups such as the Innocence Project in exonerating wrongly
convicted death-row prisoners. In 2015, six condemned inmates were
cleared in the United States, bringing the total to 156 since such
efforts began to be tracked in 1973, Dunham said.
Last year, Nebraska became the 19th state to abolish capital
punishment.
Texas led the country in executing 13 people in 2015, for a total of
531 over the past 40 years, according to state corrections records
compiled by the Death Penalty Information Center.
The last person executed in California was Clarence Ray Allen, put
to death in 2006 at age 76 for the murders of three people more than
25 years earlier. Soon afterward, a court ruling outlawed the
state's lethal injection protocol, and capital punishment stopped
while the state filed appeals.
The state, in a settlement with victims' families, has announced
plans for a new lethal injection protocol. Before it is used, the
state must take comments and testimony from the public, a process
that could take up to a year.
The death penalty has been a hot-button issue for California
Democratic Governor Jerry Brown. Brown has promised to uphold the
state's death penalty laws and abide by the lethal injection
settlement, but declined Reuters' request for comment.
In his previous tenure as governor from 1975 to 1983, Brown vetoed a
bill reinstating capital punishment after the U.S. Supreme Court
declared it was being administered in an unconstitutional manner.
His veto was overridden.
Opposition to capital punishment by Democratic Attorney General and
U.S. Senate candidate Kamala Harris has led death penalty advocates
to be skeptical that executions will resume anytime soon.
"It's certainly not going to happen before the election," said
Schubert.
(Reporting by Sharon Bernstein; Editing by Sara Catania and Peter
Cooney)
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