July 11, 2008
Death penalty’s survival uncertain, state finds
Some 71 years after the last hanging of an inmate at Folsom Prison, California's death penalty is fatally flawed, according to a state commission report.
The California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice was established in 2004 in part to determine the extent to which the state's legal system has caused wrongful executions. It reported June 30 that the state must narrow its death penalty, in part because the penalty is impossibly expensive to continue in its current broad form.
Under the statute now in effect, a full 87 percent of California's first-degree murders are "death eligible," and could be prosecuted as death cases, the commission noted. Any of a total of 22 "special circumstances" can be cited by local prosecutors in seeking a death penalty. The list includes drive-by murder. A federal Justice Department study in 2000 found numerous racial and geographic disparities applied to death penalty sentences…
LINK - EDHTelegraph.com (The El Dorado Hills Telegraph)
