By Adrianne Appel
BOSTON, Jul 30 2008 (IPS)

A high-level California commission has sounded the death knell for the state’s “dysfunctional” death penalty system, calling for an infusion of hundreds of millions of dollars or the closing down of the state’s death chamber.

“The time has come to address death penalty reform in a frank and honest way,” the commission said in its 145-page report at the end of a four-year-long study.

“The witnesses described a system that is close to collapse,” the study said, agreeing that it was “broken” and “a hollow promise” that required extensive reform.

A yearly injection of 95 million dollars would be required to top up the current annual budget of more than 100 million dollars. The state would also need to spend about 400 million dollars on a new death row prison to relieve the chronic overcrowding at the 150-year-old San Quentin.

The state was in a serious fiscal crisis and lawmakers were unlikely to agree to spend millions more on death penalty reform, said Natasha Minsker, death penalty policy director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California (ACLU-NC).

“The main recommendation is to spend more on lawyers. And there is no more money,” Minsker told IPS. “I think this isn’t the beginning of the end, it’s the end of the end.”

The size of California’s death row – the largest in the country – was partly due to the state’s 21 capital crimes, more than in any other state.

But another reason was that inmates languished for decades on death row waiting for the completion of all appeals. A shortage of free, publicly-funded lawyers was at the root of the delay in hearings, the report said.

All death row inmates were poor and eligible for legal aid. But the state had not adequately funded its offices of public defenders so inmates waited an average of three to five years before being allocated a court-appointed lawyer.

Death row prisoners generally filed three major appeals. Executions were scheduled only after all appeal rights have been exhausted. Currently, 79 death row inmates had not been able to file their first appeal because they had not been assigned an attorney, the report stated.

The long delay meant that the 13 prisoners executed in California since 1977 spent an average of 17 years on death row, compared to 12 years in other death penalty states. Fourteen California death row prisoners had committed suicide while waiting for execution. Thirty-eight death row inmates had died of natural causes.

Seventy percent of inmates who appealed were granted new trials or hearings, illustrating the high degree of judicial error, the report said. Since 1977, 98 prisoners on California’s death row have had their sentences reversed. The average wait before a sentence was reversed by a state court was 11 years.

The commission also studied the cost of replacing the death penalty with life imprisonment without parole. This would slash the current spending of more than 100 million dollars to 11.5 million.

Elizabeth Zitrin of Death Penalty Focus in California told IPS any new spending could be better used for “crime prevention, cold cases, hiring more police officers, highway patrol officers and more teachers.”

The commission did not push for any particular option. But some commissioners felt compelled to attach to the report dissenting opinions and a clarification of views.

“California should follow the lead of other civilised societies who have concluded that the death penalty be abolished,” one group said.

By highlighting the state’s delay in providing legal assistance for death row inmates, the report could be used by lawyers to challenge the legality of the Californian death penalty system, Minsker suggested.

If a judge ruled in favour of an inmate, the case would shut down the state’s death penalty system until it allocated more money for public defenders.

“The chief justice of the Supreme Court of California testified before the commission and said if nothing is done the death penalty will collapse under its own weight. If he thinks it’s that dysfunctional, how long will it be before a court intervenes on behalf of a prisoner?” Minsker asked.

A de facto moratorium on executions is currently in place in California due to three court challenges to its lethal injection procedures.

Abolitionist groups like the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Death Penalty Focus (DPF) are already preparing voters for a death penalty ballot question in the next state elections in November 2010, the only legal way to end the death penalty in California. The groups are giving talks and holding workshops on such issues as costs, racial inequities and whether or not the death penalty is a deterrent.

“What we’re really focused on is how the death penalty impacts their local community. Ten of 58 (state) counties sentence most people to death. We talk about how much these counties cost the others. It’s a local issue,” Minsker said.

Six people had been exonerated from death row in California. But unlike elsewhere, the issue of innocence was not a big one for California voters, Minsker said.

People were worried about the “disastrous” state finances, private health care costs and public education cuts. “That’s what is driving voters.”

The commission’s findings on the racial inequities in the application of the death penalty should be a wake-up call for Californians, Minsker said.

The report may “hasten changes among other states”, added Zitrin.

California’s decision to appoint a commission to review its death penalty follows a growing trend among the country’s remaining death penalty states.

Similar commissions are currently at work in Maryland, Nevada, North Carolina and Tennessee. And grassroots abolition groups in Arkansas, Missouri, New Hampshire, Texas and other states are campaigning for their own commissions, according to news reports.

In 2007, a state commission in New Jersey recommended the scrapping of its death penalty, making the state the first in more than 40 years to outlaw capital punishment.

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