I WON'T TELL YOU HOW & WHEN I DECIDE I WILL GO FOR THE DEATH PENALTY!

Ramos in February 2008 (before the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice) defended the practice of most prosecutors in the state to keep secret the processes they use in choosing which defendants will face the death penalty, despite some researchers have suggested that such secrecy leads to a disproportionate number of death sentences for minorities and the poor.

Ramos, however, said exposing the thinking of district attorneys would allow defense lawyers to unfairly glimpse (Blogger Bob's comment: Is there a scenario of a "fair glimpse"?) prosecution strategies about cases. He assured the commission that district attorneys throughout the state use their discretion in a responsible manner (Blogger Bob's comment--isn't this hearsay??). "The ultimate decision we can make is taking somebody's life, and we are very careful about that," he said.

Blogger Bob's comments: The criteria should be objective and public and if not, there needs to be some objective oversight process to assure than class, race, ethnicity, national origin, economic ability to retain competent outside counsel, association, speech content, religion, gender, sexual orientation and gender are not factors in deciding for or against the death penalty.

The Death Penalty...Can we afford it??

To get an idea how big the death penalty business is, were the Governor to convert all 700 death sentences in California to permanent imprisonment, it would save the state $1 billion over the next five years and we would not have to build another $400,000 in new death row housing--maybe we could spend it on schools?? Hiring more DA support staff? How about budgeting better raises?? What says ya'll??

It’s not just the practice of the death penalty that is being undermined; it’s the theory as well. The American Law Institute — the brain trust of the legal community — withdrew its support for the death penalty, finding, among other things, that it “is plagued by racial disparities; is enormously expensive even as many defense lawyers are underpaid and some are incompetent; risks executing innocent people; and is undermined by the politics that come with judicial elections.”

But California, oddly enough, has become a rogue state when it comes to death sentencing.

California accounted for 29 of those 106 death sentences in 2009, or 27 percent (more than double California’s share of the total U.S. population). The number is over 700 today. For all the forensic hormones that flow when talking about the death penalty, California has only executed 13 people since 1967. It takes more than 25 years for a case to move through all of the mandatory appeals. All executions have been on hold for four years as a result of legal challenges. We don’t have enough lawyers and judges to handle 700 death sentences. Half the people on death row don’t have an attorney, and the Supreme Court already spends almost one-third of its time on death penalty cases.

The system is simply overwhelmed, overburdened and overdue for change. California’s death penalty process is broken--should a District Attorney continue to pump more death penalty cases in?

Meanwhile, the state is spending hundreds of millions of precious dollars trying to prop the failed system up. Housing for just one person on death row costs $90,000 more per year than housing in the general prison population (itself a hefty $50,000 a year). That means we are now paying an extra $63 million a year for death row housing.

The Governor is right: we need to spend more money on education and less on prisons to bring back the safe, healthy and sustainable California we all dream of. One necessary step is to really look at the cases being approved for death penalty tracking.

Your thoughts??

Bob Conaway-Candidate for San Bernardino County District Attorney