SORE LOSERS OVER PASSAGE OF CALIFORNIA DEATH PENALTY PROP

Suit filed to block death-penalty measure Prop. 66

By Bob Egelko

San Francusco Chronicle
November 10, 2016

Opponents of a newly passed initiative aimed at speeding up executions have asked the state Supreme Court to block it from taking effect.

Proposition 66, approved by voters Tuesday, will cause “confusion and upheaval” in the courts, interfere with their authority, and force both courts and lawyers into hurried and less-reliable decisions in capital cases, said the suit filed Wednesday by former state Attorney General John Van de Kamp and Ron Briggs, a former El Dorado County supervisor. Briggs’ father, state Sen. John Briggs, sponsored the state’s current death penalty law as a 1978 ballot measure.

With all precincts reporting but some late ballots yet to be counted, Prop. 66 had a 50.9 percent majority. Voters meanwhile rejected Prop. 62, which would have repealed the death penalty and made life in prison without parole the mandatory sentence for capital murder.

Prop. 66, sponsored by prosecutors, requires the state Supreme Court to rule on death penalty appeals within five years of sentencing, more than twice as fast as its current pace. It sets the same five-year deadline for the second-stage appeals known as habeas corpus and requires defense lawyers to file those appeals with the trial judge within a year, compared with the previous three-year deadline.

Another provision seeks to expand the pool of defense lawyers by requiring attorneys to take capital cases if they accept court appoints to represent criminal defendants in other cases. Prop. 66 also eliminates administrative review of the state’s newly adopted rules for executions by a single drug, replacing the previous three-drug procedure.

The lawsuit said the measure’s timetables and other restrictions would “impair the courts’ exercise of discretion, as well as the courts’ ability to act in fairness to the litigants before them.”

Under the new one-year filing deadline, the suit said, lawyers who file habeas corpus appeals “will be forced to cut corners in their investigation and representation.” Prop. 66 would also redirect death penalty appeals to lawyers “who do not currently meet the qualification standards,” lawyers for Van de Kamp and Briggs argued.

“Proposition 66 was passed by the voters because they are sick of lawyers who oppose the death penalty constantly undermining the system with lawsuit after lawsuit,” said McGregor Scott, former U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of California and co-chair of the Yes on 66 campaign. “It is not at all ironic, and is in fact a slap in the face to the voters, that their response to the passage of Proposition 66 was to file another lawsuit trying to thwart the will of the voters.”