Recent Death Penalty News
The below article is from the Los Angeles Catholic Archdiocese newspaper, The Tidings… July 11, 2008
State's death penalty system: 'Close to collapse,' says panel
By R. W. Dellinger
In the first comprehensive look at capital punishment in California since it was restored in 1977, a prestigious state panel described the system as "close to collapse."
The 116-page report, released June 30 by the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice, found that the time between judgment and execution in California doubles that of every other state still executing criminals. While the national average is a dozen years, here the average delay is 20 to 25 years.
The report says the state's death penalty system is "plagued" with excessive downtime in the appointment of counsel for direct appeals and habeas corpus petitions, and a "severe backlog" in the review of appeals and habeas petitions before the California Supreme Court.
"The failures in the administration of California's death penalty law create cynicism and disrespect for the rule of law, increase the duration and costs of confining death row inmates, weaken any possible deterrent benefits of capital punishment, increase the emotional trauma experienced by murder victims, families, and delay the resolution of meritorious capital appeals," the report declared.
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Death penalty and race: Scales of justice may weigh heavily against blacks
Statistics indicate sentence meted out highly selectively.
By Claire Cooper - Special to The Bee, July 6, 2008
For Bill Babbitt, a black man, the question comes down to this: Why did Sacramento County condemn his brother Manny to death for killing a white woman but sentence his cousin Butchie's white killer to a year in jail?
"I'm looking at all these murders that have occurred, hundreds, and I'm thinking, how did Manny's name come up?" says Babbitt, who witnessed his brother's execution by lethal injection in 1999.
How did Manuel Babbitt become one of the 827 first-degree murderers chosen for California's ultimate penalty? The same question is being asked, in effect, by a state commission that tried to learn whether race or other inappropriate factors have been determining who gets the death penalty and who does not.
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California's death penalty process is 'dysfunctional,' panel finds
July 1, 2008, LA Times
California's administration of the death penalty is "close to collapse" and would require massive new state spending or changes in sentencing laws to end decades of delay and dysfunction, a state commission reported Monday.
The findings, by the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice, grew out of the first comprehensive look at the state's death penalty in the 30 years since capital punishment was restored in California.
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