LA
QUINTA, Calif. — A federal judge ruled Wednesday that California’s
death penalty system is so arbitrary and plagued with delay that it is
unconstitutional, a decision that is expected to inspire similar
arguments in death penalty appeals around the country.
The
state has placed hundreds of people on death row, but has not executed a
prisoner since 2006. The result, wrote Judge Cormac J. Carney of United
States District Court, is a sentence that “no rational jury or
legislature could ever impose: life in prison, with the remote
possibility of death.”
That
sense of uncertainty and delay, he wrote, “violates the Eighth
Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.”
About 40 percent of California’s 748 death row inmates have been there more than 19 years.
Judge Carney, who was appointed by President George W. Bush, issued the 29-page order vacating
the death sentence of Ernest Dewayne Jones, convicted in 1995 of raping
his girlfriend’s mother and stabbing her to death.
Calling
it “a stunningly important and unprecedented ruling,” Elisabeth A.
Semel, the director of the death penalty clinic at the University of
California, Berkeley, law school, said that the “factually dense” and
“well reasoned” opinion was likely to be cited in other cases in
California and elsewhere.
But
its legal sweep will depend on the outcome of the state’s likely appeal
to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, she said.
Douglas
A. Berman, a sentencing expert at the Ohio State University law school,
said the ruling could generate appeals in any of a dozen states with
large backups on death row and no recent executions or infrequent ones,
as well as the federal system, which has had no execution in more than a
decade.
“California
is the most extreme example, but Pennsylvania is pretty darned close,”
Professor Berman said. He questioned the logic, however, of granting a
prisoner “a windfall” because of a state’s inaction.
Professor
Berman suggested that California could address the court’s ruling by
saying, “ ‘We’ve got to get our act together and move forward with
executions.’ ”
“But,” he added, “that’s a heck of a lot easier said than done.”
California
voters affirmed the death penalty by a narrow margin in 2012, with 48
percent of voters favoring replacing it with life in prison without
parole. That vote, Professor Berman said, “may reflect that they’re
comfortable with a system that doesn’t get around to executing
somebody.”
The
death penalty has been effectively under a moratorium in the state
since 2006, when Judge Jeremy Fogel of United States District Court in
San Jose ordered changes in the state’s execution methods. In 2008,
Ronald M. George, then the chief justice of California, called the
system for handling appeals in capital cases “dysfunctional.” A
state-appointed commission reached a similar conclusion that year,
stating the system was “plagued with excessive delay” in appointing
lawyers and in reviews of appeals and petitions before the State Supreme
Court.
Mr.
Jones’s lead lawyer, Michael Laurence, said in a statement that the
legal team was grateful for the decision, adding, “The execution of Mr.
Jones, and the others like him whose meritorious legal claims have gone
unheard for decades, serves no valid state interest.”
Mr.
Jones’s trial for the killing in 1992 of Julia Miller, an accountant,
got little attention at the time. It took place down the hall from the
murder trial of O. J. Simpson, and The Los Angeles Times published an
article comparing the “mundane murder trial” with the nearby “trial of
the century.”
Eric
M. Freedman, a professor at the Hofstra University law school, said
that he doubted the case would make it to the Supreme Court or set
national policy on the death penalty, but that it would still resonate.
“The
decision is incredibly important in bringing to public consciousness
that this has been a political shell game,” he said, with politicians
endorsing the death penalty but unwilling to provide the funds for
defense lawyers and efficient courts that would keep the system working.
Judge
Carney was scathing in his description of California’s administration
of capital punishment and said the flaws stemmed mainly from state
deficiencies, not abuse of the system by prisoners.
“When
an individual is condemned to death in California, the sentence carries
with it an implicit promise from the state that it will actually be
carried out,” he wrote. It is a promise to the people of the state, who
pay for the justice system, and to the jurors who see “evidence of
undeniably horrific crimes” and participate in the “agonizing
deliberations,” and to the victims and their loved ones. Not the least,
he added, “it is made to the hundreds of individuals on death row, as a
statement their crimes are so heinous they have forfeited their right to
life.”
However,
Judge Carney wrote, “for too long now, the promise has been an empty
one,” and the result is “a system in which arbitrary factors, rather
than legitimate ones like the nature of the crime or the date of the
death sentence, determine whether an individual will actually be
executed.”
Thus, he concluded, the death penalty system in California “serves no penological purpose.”
“Such a system,” he said, “is unconstitutional.”
A
prominent supporter of the death penalty, Kent S. Scheidegger of the
Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, disagreed. Mr. Scheidegger said he
found the decision “kind of surprising” since the argument that delays
are unconstitutional has been rejected by the Supreme Court. The reason a
majority of Americans support the death penalty, he said, “is that the
very worst murderers just plain deserve it — that remains true even
after long delays.”
Judge
Carney, however, wrote that the Supreme Court cases focused on each
inmate’s individual delay.
Instead, he noted, Mr. Jones argued that his
long-delayed execution would be arbitrary and serve no state purpose
“because of systemwide dysfunction in the post-conviction review
process.”
The state attorney general, Kamala D. Harris, is reviewing the decision, a spokesman said.
Michael McDonnell in the Oregon State Pen, more than THIRTY (30) YEARS & WHY! Because HISTORY!! Thomas Balmer current Supreme Court "Justice" is about to get a CLARION CALL, as are all those involved in the case of Michael McDonnell!
ReplyDelete