A GOOD RULING, BUT WITH 747 INMATES ON DEATH ROW, CALIFORNIA IS NOT EXECUTING ANYONE

California’s Top Court Declines To Overhaul Death Penalty

 

LAPPL New Watch 

August 27, 2021

 

 

 

 California's execution chamber at San Quentin prison  

 

The California Supreme Court on Thursday decided to leave the state’s death penalty law intact, refusing an entreaty from Gov. Gavin Newsom that would have overturned scores of death sentences. 

 

In a unanimous decision, the state’s highest court said there was little legal support under state law for overhauling the law, as opponents of capital punishment urged. In fact, the court said, some of the precedents cited by defense lawyers actually undercut their position. 

 

Defense lawyers had argued the state’s capital punishment law was unconstitutional because it failed to require jurors to unanimously agree beyond a reasonable doubt on the reasons why a defendant should be sentenced to death instead of life without possibility of parole. A decision to impose the death penalty also should be made beyond a reasonable doubt, the standard now used in deciding guilt, the lawyers said. 

 

If the court had agreed, hundreds — if not all — death sentences would have had to be overturned because such decisions generally apply retroactively. 

 

Justice Goodwin Liu, who wrote the ruling, said some of the cases cited by defense attorneys did not support their position. “If anything,” he said, they suggested “the ultimate penalty determination is entirely within the discretion of the jury.” 

 

The court did not reject the constitutional arguments raised by Newsom but said they did “not bear directly on the specific state law questions before us.”