That's the title of an AP report by Paul Elias, via today's San Francisco Chronicle. LINK
A Contra Costa County judge last week sentenced Darryl Kemp to death for the random rape and murder of a young jogger. But chances are that Kemp will not be executed anytime soon, if at all.
He is 73. It takes an average of 20 years to execute an inmate in California. And capital punishment has been suspended since February 2006 when Michael Morales came within two hours of execution for the rape and murder of a 17-year-old girl.
On Tuesday, the return to capital punishment takes a step forward when prison officials convene a daylong public hearing on proposed rules for lethally injecting condemned inmates with three drugs. Even if the proposal passes legal muster, reinstating the death penalty is expected to take up to a year.
Whatever is decided in California, where there are 680 condemned inmates, is expected to shape how other states carry out executions.
Since the U.S. Supreme Court signed off on Kentucky's lethal injection process last year and lifted a brief nationwide moratorium, 36 states and the federal government, which employ the execution method, have experienced varying degrees of success in restarting capital punishment.
A federal judge in 2006 halted executions in California until officials expanded the death chamber at San Quentin prison and provided more executioner training and other upgrades to ensure the condemned do not suffer cruel and unusual punishment.
The Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation has since constructed a new death chamber and the proposed new regulations require execution team members to undergo monthly mock executions. The rules would require three syringes, each filled with different drugs, to be administered by staff licensed to give injections in California. A physician must be on hand to declare death.
A state judge ruled that the 42 pages of execution protocols, including instructions for mixing and injecting the drugs, had to be subjected to California's lengthy regulatory process, starting with a 45-day public comment period.
Corrections officials have received more than 1,400 written comments, the vast majority opposed to the proposed procedures or death penalty generally.
And:
Maryland has embarked on a public comment process like California's. A federal judge has ordered a halt to executions in Missouri. And other states such as Texas have carried out a combined 68 lethal injection executions since the Supreme Court's ruling in 2008.
"Death row foes now fight the cost of executions," is Carol Williams' report in today's Los Angeles Times.
Nearly 3 1/2 years into a court-ordered suspension of executions,
opponents have embraced a new argument: that Californians can't afford
to carry out the death penalty in a constitutional manner.
They contend that by commuting all 682 death row inmates' sentences to
life without the possibility of parole, the state could save up to $1
billion over the next five years -- a view expected to be offered, and
challenged, during a public hearing today in Sacramento on proposed
changes to the lethal injection procedures.
They have been empowered by the state's budget crisis, as well as by some influential law-and-order advocates who have concluded that deficiencies in the legal and corrections systems are beyond repair.
More California death row inmates have died in the time that executions have been halted than were put to death in the previous 30 years: 16 have died since early 2006, 11 of natural causes and five by suicide, compared with 13 put to death since 1976.
Among those calling for commutation on economic grounds are former California Atty. Gen. John Van de Kamp and former corrections chief Jeanne Woodford.
"With California facing its most severe fiscal crisis in recent memory -- with draconian cuts about to be imposed from Sacramento that will affect every resident of the state -- it would be crazy not to consider the fact that it will add as much as $1 billion over the next five years simply to keep the death penalty on the books," Van de Kamp argued.
A death penalty advocate through his long prosecutorial career, Van de Kamp led a review last year of the state's capital punishment apparatus by the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice.
The bipartisan panel concluded that the system is dysfunctional and needs nearly $100 million more annually to provide adequate legal representation for capital cases and cut in half what is now an average of 25 years between conviction and execution.
Earlier coverage begins here.
Comments