Death Penalty News

President Trump exploded with rage yesterday after the governor of California announced he was suspending the death penalty in the state. The move will prevent executions of any of the 737 inmates held on the largest death row in the United States. Mr Trump tweeted: "Defying voters, the Governor of California will halt all death penalty executions of 737 stone cold killers. "Friends and families of the always forgotten VICTIMS are not thrilled, and neither am I!" Governor Gavin Newsom announced the plan to halt use of the death penalty by saying: "The intentional killing of another person is wrong and as governor, I will not oversee the execution of any individual." Flawed The death penalty was not a deterrent, wasted taxpayer dollars and was flawed because it was "irreversible and irreparable in the event of human error", he added. Governor Newsom called the death penalty "a failure" that "has discriminated again...

California Governor Gavin Newsom will announce a moratorium on executions and a temporary reprieve for all 737 inmates on death row in the state. US media report he plans to sign an executive order later on Wednesday, describing the death penalty as "inconsistent with our bedrock values". California has not carried out any executions since 2006, as a series of court battles over execution methods have been waged. No death row inmates will be released. Governor Newsom took office in January and a death penalty moratorium was one of his campaign pledges. "I do not believe that a civilized society can claim to be a leader in the world as long as its government continues to sanction the premeditated and discriminatory execution of its people," he said in a statement issued with the executive order. The order will also withdraw California's lethal injection protocol and close down the state's execution chamber at San Quentin prison. ...

One June day in 1983, a California professor drove over to a neighbor's house to pick up his 11-year-old son from a sleepover. Nobody answered the door, so the professor peered through a window - and saw a ghastly panorama of blood. The professor found his son stabbed to death, along with the bodies of Peggy and Doug Ryen, the homeowners. The Ryens' 10-year-old daughter was also dead, with 46 wounds, but their 8-year-old son was still breathing. This quadruple murder began a travesty that is still unfolding and underscores just how broken the American justice system is. A man named Kevin Cooper is on San Quentin's death row awaiting execution for the murders, even though a federal judge says he probably is innocent. "He is on death row because the San Bernardino Sheriff's Department framed him," the judge, William A. Fletcher of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, declared in a searing 2013 critique delivered in a distinguished lecture series. ...

San Quentin Death Row “It’s a good day to die,” Clarence Ray Allen said shortly before he was executed on January 17, 2006 in San Quentin State Prison. He had turned 76 the day before, and had served 23 years and one month on death row. He was the last inmate put to death in California. In the ensuing 10 years, the death penalty debate has continued, at the ballot box, and in the courts. Here is a brief review of some of the major developments: One month after Allen was executed, U.S. District Court Judge Jeremy Fogel blocked the scheduled execution of Michael Morales, ruling that lethal injection, the way executions were conducted, created a serious risk of suffering and lingering death that would constitute a violation of the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. “This causes a de facto moratorium on the death penalty in California, as no licensed medical professional will perform the procedure,” the Stanford Progressive wrote. Governor Arnold S...

California Death Chamber LOS ANGELES -- Three former California governors announced a proposed ballot initiative Thursday designed to speed up the state's lengthy death penalty process. Former Govs. George Deukmejian, Pete Wilson and Gray Davis said they were launching a signature-gathering effort for the measure that would limit appeals available to death row inmates, remove the prisoners from special death row housing, and require them to work at prison jobs in order to pay restitution to victims. The former governors, appearing with law enforcement officials at a news conference, made it clear they want executions to begin as soon as possible. There are more than 700 prisoners on California's death row. "Old age should not be the leading cause of death on death row," former Gov. Pete Wilson said. They agreed the death penalty system is crippled by waste and inefficiency. "We all know the death penalty system is broken at the appellat...

On a recent program, CNN’s Piers Morgan asked Arnold Schwarzenegger his opinion on whether accused Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev should receive the death penalty. Although admitting that he was not fully informed about the case, the former Governor of California responded, “If convicted, I think that yeah, he should get the death penalty. Yes." While Schwarzenegger, like the rest of us, is welcome to have and express an opinion, certainly the decision on such an important, life-and-death matter should not be based on what the majority of the public thinks or wants. But what about the bombing victims and their families? Should their majority be a major factor on whether the Federal Government should seek the death penalty against Tsarnaev? And should their wishes be communicated to the jury? Consistent with Justice Department procedure, U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz is in fact consulting with the victims and their families' families before making a recommendatio...

San Quentin's brand new execution chamber and gurney Ensuring California's death penalty system remains in limbo for the foreseeable future, a state appeals court on Thursday scrapped the state's latest attempt to update its lethal injection procedures. In a 28-page ruling, the 1st District Court of Appeal invalidated California's lethal injection procedures, finding that state prison officials failed to comply with proper administrative rules when crafting new regulations more than two years ago. The decision sends California back to the drawing board, unless the Brown administration appeals the decision to the California Supreme Court. The appeals court upheld a Marin County judge, who likewise found the prison department failed to comply with the state's administrative procedures act for a variety of reasons, including providing no public explanation for why San Quentin officials opted to continue with a three-drug lethal injection method as opposed ...

A new California law will make it impossible for innocent people to go to prison based on unsupported testimony from jailhouse snitches. Starting next year, California prosecutors can no longer win convictions in cases that rely solely on the uncorroborated testimony of jailhouse informants. That requirement — imposed by a bill, SB 687, that Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law this month — isn't groundbreaking, considering that more than a dozen other states already have similar laws. But it's an important step forward for California. A series of articles in The Times and a 1990 grand jury report revealed that jailhouse informants were routinely granted favors or given money by prosecutors for what turned out to be false testimony. Dozens of innocent people were sent to prison in the 1980s based on unsupported testimony from snitches. Some convictions were later overturned, but not before many of those wrongly imprisoned spent years behind bars. The California Commission on the...

San Quentin's new death chamber, "built for nearly $900,000 and designed solely for lethal injections". Nearly 5 years ago, a San Jose federal judge went on a highly unusual expedition to San Quentin's aging death chamber, eventually finding that the converted eerie green gas chamber was outdated and replete with potential problems for carrying out executions. On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel will return to San Quentin, this time for a tour of the state's new and untested death chamber, built for nearly $900,000 and designed solely for lethal injections. With the visit, California will take a step toward resolving whether it can resume executions on a death row now brimming with nearly 720 inmates. But it may prove to be a small step. Major questions continue to surround the state's effort to revise its lethal injection procedures and end a court showdown that began in February 2006. Five years after giving death row inmate Michael Morales ...

San Quentin's brand new execution chamber Before leaving office on 2 January, the outgoing governor of California declined to act on the clemency petition filed on behalf of Kevin Cooper, who has consistently maintained his innocence of the four murders for which he was sentenced to death in 1985. In a letter to Kevin Cooper's lawyers and the state authorities on 2 January, the Legal Affairs Secretary for outgoing Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger acknowledged that "the clemency application raises many evidentiary concerns which deserve a thorough and careful review of voluminous records." The letter suggested however that there was not enough time for such a review before the governor left office. The letter concluded by stating that the clemency materials would remain in the Governor's office "for consideration by Governor-elect [Jerry] Brown". The letter struck a different tone to Governor Schwarzenegger's statement in January 2004 when he deni...

Kevin Cooper, who has been on death row in California for 25 years, is asking the outgoing state governor to commute his death sentence before leaving office on 2 January 2011. Kevin Cooper has consistently maintained his innocence of the four murders for which he was sentenced to death. Since 2004, a dozen federal appellate judges have indicated their doubts about his guilt . On the night of 4 June 1983, Douglas and Peggy Ryen were hacked and stabbed to death in their home in Chino Hills, California, along with their 10-year-old daughter Jessica and 11-year-old houseguest Christopher Hughes. The couple's eight-year-old son, Joshua Ryen, was seriously wounded, but survived. He told investigators that the attackers were three or four white men. In hospital, he saw a picture of Kevin Cooper on television and said that Cooper, who is black, was not the attacker. However, the boy's later testimony – that he only saw one attacker – was introduced at the 1985 trial. The case has man...

Kevin Cooper The legal effort to prevent the execution of Kevin Cooper has run its course. Unless the governor of California intervenes, Cooper is likely to be put to death next year for the brutal 1983 murders of a Chino Hills couple, their 10-year-old daughter and an 11-year-old houseguest. Just one eyewitness survived the horrific scene, a 9-year-old boy whose throat had been sliced. His initial account of the attack is one of many disturbing contradictions that led five federal judges to take issue with their colleagues' decision to put a stop to Cooper's appeals. The boy recalled 3 attackers - all white. Cooper is black. The surviving victim later changed his story to claim that he saw a black man with a great "poof" of hair standing over his parents' bed. Cooper, who had just escaped from a nearby minimum-security prison, wore his hair in cornrows at the time. "He is on death row because the San Bernardino Sheriff's Department framed him,...

Kevin Cooper “California may be about to execute an innocent man.” That’s the view of five federal judges in a case involving Kevin Cooper, a black man in California who faces lethal injection next year for supposedly murdering a white family. The judges argue compellingly that he was framed by police. Mr. Cooper’s impending execution is so outrageous that it has produced a mutiny among these federal circuit court judges, distinguished jurists just one notch below the United States Supreme Court. But the judicial process has run out for Mr. Cooper. Now it’s up to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to decide whether to commute Mr. Cooper’s sentence before leaving office. This case, an illuminating window into the pitfalls of capital punishment, dates to a horrific quadruple-murder in June 1983. Doug and Peggy Ryen were stabbed to death in their house, along with their 10-year-old daughter and an 11-year-old houseguest. The Ryens’ 8-year-old son, Josh, was left for dead but survived. They ...

State officials opened bids this week for the 1st construction phase of a $356 million death row complex at San Quentin State Prison, despite a Marin County lawsuit also filed this week seeking to block the project. "We're moving forward with the process," said George Kostyrko, a spokesman for the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. The county's lawsuit filed Tuesday requests a temporary restraining order to prevent the state from "encumbering or expending any funds for the San Quentin Condemned Inmate Complex until this litigation is resolved." Deputy County Counsel David Zaltsman said he had sent messages to the corrections department and the other defendants in the suit, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and state Controller John Chiang, to see if they would voluntary agree to halt progress on the project until the suit is resolved. Zaltsman said he would seek a hearing to enforce a restraining order if he gets no cooperation by the end of the...