A system designed to kill people should be subjected to the most
scrutiny because if that system is broken, the loss of innocent
life results. Under current circumstances, capital punishment has
proven to be a broken system in California. It is a wonder that
Gov. Gray Davis, State Attorney General Bill Lockyer and other
death penalty advocates won’t consider a moratorium on
capital punishment in the state.
State Sen. Gloria Romero, D ““Â Los Angeles, called for
the creation of a special commission on Tuesday to study the
effectiveness of the death penalty in the state with the most
inmates, 642, on death row. Romero cited racial and geographic
biases related to California’s system of capital punishment:
35 percent of the state’s death row is black, compared to 7
percent of the population; a few counties have sent dozens of
people to death row, while 19 have sent none. Davis responded by
issuing a vague statement on his position in favor of the death
penalty, unwilling to critically examine a compelling case against
state killings ““Â a case that includes too many stories,
in California and across the country, of the death penalty’s
failure.
Last month, for example, Delma Banks Jr. of Texas had already
eaten his “last meal” and was preparing to be strapped
to a gurney when the U.S. Supreme Court granted a last-minute
reprieve. Earlier this week, the Supreme Court agreed to hear his
case, in which evidence will be presented that Banks, now
represented by the NAACP, at the time had incompetent defense
council and that the prosecution withheld important evidence.
Banks, a black man convicted in 1980 by an all white jury for
killing a white teenager, was represented by a lawyer who presented
no evidence on his behalf during the trial.
Banks’ story is not unusual. In Illinois, an outgoing
governor, Republican George Ryan, cleared the state’s death
row after 13 individuals were exonerated, five of them after DNA
evidence proved their innocence.
Furthermore, a racial bias exists when juries send people to
die. An Illinois government study showed juries are three times as
likely to send those who murder whites to death compared to those
who murder blacks. A Pennsylvania study commissioned by the
state’s Supreme Court, meanwhile, concluded that black
defendants are more likely than whites to receive death as
punishment.
Davis says California does not have many of the problems other
states do. Lockyer points out that anyone on death row in the state
can request a DNA test to prove their innocence. But the California
system is not as unique as these officials argue.
Besides the evidence of geographic and racial bias presented by
Romero, there have been numerous documented cases of Californians
who were unfairly sent to death row. Patrick “Hooty”
Croy, after 12 years on death row, was cleared when a jury
unanimously found that he killed in self-defense. Lee Perry Farmer
was cleared by a Riverside jury that found someone else had
committed the murder for which he had served eight years on death
row.
The lists goes on.
And yet so does public support for capital punishment. People
don’t know its injustice. When a wrong needs to be righted,
leaders must lead. Davis, and others with power to do something
about the problem, should ask, how many Delma Banks Jrs. are on
death row? How many were not saved by the Supreme Court, or NAACP?
How many have already been executed?
Until California, Texas and the rest of the country gets
leadership like what Ryan demonstrated in Illinois, these questions
will go unanswered, and an unjust system will continue, with human
life as its victim.