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| San Quentin's brand new execution chamber |
Amid renewed efforts to repeal California's death penalty and nearly 6 years into a de facto moratorium on executions, San Quentin's death row has quietly piled up an unprecedented number of inmates who have exhausted their legal appeals and would face imminent death by lethal injection if the state resumes carrying out the ultimate punishment.
At least a dozen inmates could be executed in a span of a few months if an oft-stalled legal challenge to the state's lethal injection method is resolved, roughly the same number of condemned murderers California has put to death in more than three decades of capital punishment.
A Bay Area News Group review shows 12 death row inmates have been turned away in their appeals all the way through the U.S. Supreme Court, generally considered the final stage in the lengthy death penalty review process. At least 2 other inmates have lost their appeals through the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which ordinarily is the last, best hope to overturn a death sentence, while others are awaiting rulings from that court.
3 Bay Area condemned killers are among the 12 -- David Allen Raley, from Santa Clara County; Harvey Heishman, from Alameda County; and Douglas Mickey, sentenced in San Mateo County. The dozen inmates eligible for execution dates have averaged 27 years on death row, where 720 prisoners await their fate.
For a state where executions have been such a rarity, the prospect of a flurry of them could test California's appetite for the death penalty, possibly at a time when foes of capital punishment are working furiously toward a November 2012 ballot measure that would abolish death sentences altogether.
"If California were to begin executing at the rate of other states, it seems like people would care about the issue more one way or another," said former California Department of Corrections chief and San Quentin warden Jeanne Woodford, now executive director of a major anti-death penalty group. "It is kind of abstract at this moment."
Added Michael Laurence, head of the leading state agency representing death row inmates: "We've not seen any kind of execution rate like that since the 1950s. We're barely limping along now. You add 12 scheduled executions, and I don't see how the system functions."
The timing of a resumption of executions is no sure thing. The lethal injection challenge continues to languish in the federal courts, but may get moving early next year because prison officials recently notified a federal judge they finally will have a new execution team in place by this coming week. Lawyers on both sides had been awaiting that development to proceed to a hearing.
But if the case continues to drag on, that will only add to the backlog of inmates who finish their appeals. Even the generally liberal 9th Circuit has been upholding more death sentences in recent years, and has found itself quickly reversed in several instances by the U.S. Supreme Court when it has attempted to overturn them.
The prospect of executions certainly has all sides in the death penalty debate on edge. U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel put them on hold in early 2006 in the case of death row inmate Michael Morales, who first raised the argument the state's lethal injection procedures were flawed and could result in a cruel and inhumane death. Until those claims could be resolved, Morales' execution has been put off for the 1981 Central Valley rape and murder of 17-year-old Terri Lynn Winchell.
Morales is among the 12 inmates who could be 1st in line to be executed, and Winchell's family is ready for the wait to end.
"As long as he's alive and not given the justice the court and judge sentenced him (to), this crime will live with us every day of our lives," said Barbara Christian, Winchell's mother.
Experts say there could be a variety of reactions and results if California becomes a state that regularly carries out executions, including further strains on the legal system. Ohio's state Supreme Court, faced with a similar rush a few years ago, has now scheduled one execution per month through 2013 to pace the process. In California, prosecutors would need to turn to judges in their counties to secure execution dates for each inmate, a scattered process that could take months or longer to unfold.
In addition, Gov. Jerry Brown and his approach to the death penalty would be quickly tested in a string of clemency requests; no California governor has commuted a death sentence in the modern death penalty era.
Death penalty advocates say executions would remove one common argument against capital punishment in California.
"If we do actually start carrying out executions, it would undermine the argument that the death penalty is not being enforced and we should get rid of it," said Kent Scheidegger, director of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation.
But death penalty critics say executions will not alter the persistent problems in the state's death penalty system. Arthur Alarcon, a 9th Circuit judge who co-authored a recent study that found the death penalty costs California an additional $184 million per year, said a dozen quick executions will not dent the mammoth death row or the decades it takes to resolve appeals.
As for the political fallout, former Attorney General John Van de Kamp said, "I don't know what the public reaction would be. It's going to depend on the cases and crimes themselves."
Based on Ohio's experience, California could simply just grow accustomed to executions, with positions for and against the death penalty remaining firmly entrenched across the state.
"As you have a couple, people get exhausted," said Douglas Berman, an Ohio State University law professor and sentencing expert. "There's always less attention for number 2 and number 3 and number 5. You get less of a fight progressively down the line."
Source: Daily Democrat, October 22, 2011
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