Save the death penalty. No on Prop. 62

Opponents of California’s death penalty have been highly successful at thwarting executions since the state resumed executions in 1992 after a 20-year hiatus. Measure sponsors argue that capital punishment presents the risk of executing an innocent person, but also state California’s death penalty is “simply unworkable.” Over the years, appellate attorneys have introduced endless time-sucking, frivolous appeals that have jammed the courts, largely on technical grounds that have nothing to do with guilt or innocence, e.g., the trial lawyer wasn’t top drawer; the defendant’s parents were abusive; lethal injection may not be 100 percent painless. In 2006, lawyers argued that convicted torture-murderer Michael Morales might feel pain in his last moments because of the state’s three-drug lethal-injection protocol. In exasperation, the tough-on-crime Criminal Justice Legal Foundation filed a lawsuit on behalf of the families of murder victims of two Death Row inmates to prod the state to develop a drug protocol that should pass muster with the U.S. Supreme Court. State Attorney General Kamala Harris, who also said she would uphold California’s law despite her personal objections, tried to block the suit on the dubious grounds that the victims’ families “lack standing.” Opponent Matt Cherry of Death Penalty Focus told The Chronicle editorial board that capital punishment “has failed in California.” Since 1992, he added, “Just 13 people have been executed,” which he noted constitutes about 1 percent of the 930 individuals sentenced to death since 1978. In their ballot argument, Prop. 62 supporters warn that when executions resume, California risks executing an innocent person — like Carlos DeLuna who was executed in 1989 before an “independent investigation later proved his innocence.” In 2012, I asked Brown if he had considered appointing a panel to recommend Death Row inmates deserving of a commutation. Brown personally remains a death penalty opponent, so his answer is instructive: As attorney general, I think the representation was good. At a different editorial board meeting, former San Quentin State Prison Warden Jeanne Woodford, Ana Zamora of the No of 65 campaign and Berkeley law Professor Elisabeth Semel vigorously defended all of the hijinks played by anti-death-penalty lawyers. Why does it take a year to process an appeal based on a convicted killer’s childhood? Why have opponents gone after the state for getting lethal injection drugs from compounding pharmacies or other states, after opponents made it impossible to secure drugs from once legal sources? If California voters should decide to repeal capital punishment, do not believe for one minute they won’t use every dirty trick to undermine life without parole.