California Judge says Death Penalty is Unconstitutional

On July 16, U.S. District Judge Cormac Carney ruled that California’s death penalty violates the Eighth Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment. Judge Carney, an appointee of President George W. Bush, serving in the staunchly conservative Orange County, concluded the death penalty was arbitrarily administered, not a deterrence to violent crime, and riddled with systemic delays. To put this into perspective, since California reinstated the death penalty in 1978, over nine hundred people have been condemned to die. Only thirteen have been executed. Ninety-four have died of natural causes, and thirty-nine had their cases overturned without the state resentencing them. Nearly 750 people remain on death row, yet only seventeen are cleared to be executed. For this reason, Carney has ruled the timing to be cruel and unusual. In his decision, he stated that no rational jury would support the sentence of “life in prison, with the remote possibility of death,” which is, in essence, what California practices. Currently, the national average time to execution sits at nearly sixteen years. One might think that this is due to endless appeals used by inmate’s attorneys to drag out the process. However, the bulk of the time in California is spent fulfilling mandated procedures, according to Carney, summarized here by the National Law Journal:

  • Death row inmates wait three to five years for counsel to be appointed for their direct appeals, he said. After direct-appeal issues are briefed, two to three years are spent waiting for arguments to be scheduled before the California Supreme Court.
  • In the next step—state habeas review—at least eight to 10 years elapse between the verdict and appointment of habeas counsel. After that counsel is appointed, underfunding hampers investigation of potential habeas claims, Carney said.
  • After habeas briefs are submitted, another four years go by before the state Supreme Court denies the inmate’s claims in a generally conclusory opinion that will slow review of the inmate’s federal habeas claims, he continued. After filing a federal habeas petition, many inmates, because of deficiencies in the state’s process, must go back to state court to exhaust state claims.

These procedures are not the result of clever “lawyering” or Hail Mary appeals, but rather the norm for death row cases. Of course, there are those whose answer to the length of the process might be to shorten it. But, it is also true that a shortened process will only create more risk for the execution of the innocent, a grave injustice that has likely already happened even with the long system we have now. We at TADP hear over and over again from those who are philosophically supportive of the death penalty that if the death penalty is not going to be practiced in a timely fashion then we shouldn’t have it. And since we can’t even do it fairly and accurately with a long, protracted process, the question must be, “Should we do it at all?” (Photo source: http://blog.kir.com/archives/2009/12/mr_ruehle_you_a.asp)

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