Legal News

Commission gives many recommendations for "dysfunctional" death penalty system

By Jason Siegel

The death penalty system in California is dysfunctional, a state commission found.

The California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice released its tenth and final report of the administration of the death penalty in California, yesterday.

The 117-page report is the first comprehensive review of the operation of California?s death penalty law since its initial enactment in 1978, according to the commission. Three public hearings and 72 witnesses testified in the preparation of the report.

Among its findings: (via The Recorder and The Los Angeles Times)

• For the state to lower the time condemned prisoners spend on death row to the national average, California would need to spend an extra $95 million each year.
• More lawyers are needed at the state public defender's office and Habeas Corpus Resource Center to reduce death row inmates' year-long waits for lawyer appointments.
• More money is needed for the state Supreme Court, the attorney general's office and private counsel.
• Lower courts should hear appeals and constitutional challenges of death sentences, now only heard at the California Supreme Court.
• Seventy-nine death row inmates don't have lawyers for their first appeals and 291 inmates don't have lawyers to bring constitutional challenges on facts the trial courts didn't hear.
• On average, inmates must wait 12 years to get a state high court ruling on their first appeals.
• California doesn't meet the federal standard for paying private lawyer to take death penalty cases and the method of paying these attorneys violates ABA standards

In total, the cost of implementing the commissions' fixes would be more than $232 million, not including the $350 million or more a new death row is expected to cost.

The main report was accompanies by several dissenting statements, including one by eight of the 22 commissioners calling for the abolition of capital punishment.

The main report didn't expressly recommending abolishing the death penalty, but noted that $100 million per year would be saved if life sentences without the possibility of parole were given instead.

LISTEN: "Scathing Report on C.A. Death Penalty Released," KPCC

Full post as published by Legal Pad | LA on July 01, 2008 (boomark / email).