California says it will abolish death row. Movement brings cheers and anger

SAN FRANCISCO. California launched a controversial effort this week to dismantle the largest death row system in America.

Under Gov. Gavin Newsom, the state is moving towards make the transfer of convicted prisoners permanent and mandatory following what the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) calls a successful pilot program that voluntarily transferred 101 inmates from death row to general population prisons across the state.

These efforts are in line with Newsom’s belief that the death penalty in America is unfair, racially and class biased, and has little to do with justice.

“This is damn important: the likelihood of you ending up on death row has more to do with your wealth and race than your guilt or innocence,” the Democratic governor said last year. “Think about it. We talk about justice, we preach justice. But as a nation, we don’t practice it on death row.”

After after a 45-day public comment period and public hearing in March, the state hopes to begin transferring all 671 death row inmates — 650 men and 21 women — to several other maximum security prisons across the state.

Some prisoners will be able to get jobs or cellmates if they are integrated into the total number of prisoners.

The CDCR says the move allows the state to “phase out the practice of separating death row inmates solely on the basis of their sentence.” Officials say no prisoner will be re-sentenced and no commutation of sentence will be offered.

Technically, the death penalty still exists in California. Prosecutors can still look for him. But in 17 years, no one has been executed in the state. And in 2019, Newsom imposed a moratorium on executions and closed the death chamber in San Quentin, a dilapidated and still actively used 19th prison of the century overlooking the San Francisco Bay.

Those who get jobs in the prison—as clerks, laundries, or kitchen helpers—will see 70 percent of their wages go to the families of the victims, as required by Proposition 66. This voter-approved initiative in 2016 amended the California Penal Code, requiring prisoners on death row to work and pay compensation.

Anti-death penalty groups are ecstatic that the state with the highest number of convicts is moving forward, trying to essentially join the 23 other states that have abolished their death rows.

I am excited. Gavin Newsom is doing a very smart and very positive thing,” says actor Mike Farrell, a longtime activist on the issue and chairman of The Death Penalty group. and it doesn’t do us any good.”

Farrell calls the death penalty barbaric and prejudiced against blacks, browns and poor people. As long as it fully supports Newsom, he points out that many death row inmates face significant psychological barriers, which will make it difficult to integrate death row inmates.

“This will be very difficult. There are a lot of people on death row with serious mental problems,” he told NPR., noting that many have been isolated for decades. “I think this is a very good move from (Newsom). I just think it has to be done extremely carefully and very, very humanely.”

Some families of murder victims oppose

But death penalty advocates and victims’ rights advocates are disappointed and outraged.

“Hearing this news is devastating,” says Sandra Friend. She described how she feels like a victim again.

Her 8-year-old son Michael Lyons was returning home from school in Yuba City, California in 1996 when he was kidnapped and raped by serial killer Robert Boyd Rhodes, who threw the child’s body into a river bed.

“He (Rhoads) tortured Michael for 10 hours. He inflicted 70 to 80 knife wounds on him,” she says. “And he was 8 years old. Just a little boy, full of life, full of dreams.”

Rhodes was found guilty of Lyons’ murder in 1998 and later sentenced to death by lethal injection. But that did not happen.

Part of California’s death penalty reforms grew out of 2016 Proposition 66, which promised to shorten the time between a death sentence and an execution. A successful vote also required the convicts to work and pay restitution.

Now, death penalty supporters accuse Newsom of using a lesser-known section of Proposition 66 for his own ideological and political purposes.

“The Governor found loopholes and nuances in the law and used them to give criminals – the worst offenders – a breather,” said Michael Rushford, president of the conservative Criminal Justice Law Foundation. “To start mainstreaming people like Teekwon Cox, who murdered an entire family in Los Angeles after going to the wrong address to commit a gang murder, is a denial of justice. Bringing politics into criminal justice and public safety is crazy. It’s not fair, it’s not fair. and that’s stupid.”

Other states have taken similar steps.

In recent years, the governors of Pennsylvania and Oregon have also imposed a moratorium on the death penalty.

Kate Brown from Oregon has extended her predecessor’s moratorium. And in one of her final acts as governor last month, Brown commuted the sentences of all 17 people on death row to life in prison without the possibility of parole. She also ordered corrections officers to begin dismantling the state execution.

“I believe that there are many Oregonians who share my values, that it is unfair, immoral and pointless for the state to take a life, especially when it is irreversible,” she said, announcing her decision shortly before Christmas. break.

The five-year average of executions and new death sentences in America is at its lowest level in a decade, according to the recently released annual report from the non-partisan, non-profit Death Penalty Clearinghouse.

A Gallup poll shows that a majority (55 percent) of Americans are in favor of the death penalty for convicted murderers. But that contrasts sharply with the consistent 60 to 80 percent support recorded between 1976 and 2016, Gallup data shows.

In California, Sandra Friend says it’s outrageous that killers like Rhodes can be “rewarded,” as she puts it, with extended job opportunities, even as a cellmate.

“The fact that he can get off death row and go to a nicer prison, maybe have a cellmate, have a job, it’s terrible because he is the worst of the worst. He’s a monster,” she says.

Government officials emphasize that the transfer of prisoners and their housing will depend on the specific circumstances of each prisoner.

“Their housing will depend on their individual factors, and that’s what multidisciplinary panels will evaluate,” says CDCR spokesperson Vicki Waters.

But the families of Friend and other victims fear it is dangerous to simply allow death row inmates to mingle with prisoners who will eventually go free.

“Just to think about how he (Rhoads) interacts with other inmates and has the ability to teach those skills and techniques to stay off the radar, it’s terrible,” says Friend. “He poses a big threat to our society, our children.”

The state hopes to completely free death rows in California this fall, a CDCR spokesman said.

The friend vows to fight the effort. A public hearing on the matter is scheduled for March 8 in Sacramento.

“I will definitely make sure that Michael’s voice is heard,” she says, “because he is the one who gets lost in all of this.”

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