When the California Committee on Revision of the Penal Code released a draft report in May, recommending that California abolish its death penalty, it highlighted just how broken California’s death penalty system is.
Late last month, the committee released its final report, reiterating that recommendation, specifying what can and should be done until it’s abolished.
The only way to repeal the death penalty in California is by initiative, and until another abolition measure is put on the ballot and wins, the committee recommends reducing the number of people on death row by:
- Awarding clemency to commute death sentences.
- Settling pending legal challenges to death sentences.
- Recalling death sentences under Penal Code §1170(d)(1).
- Limiting the felony-murder special circumstance.
- Restoring judicial discretion to dismiss special circumstances.
- Amending the Racial Justice Act of 2020 to give it retroactive application.
- Removing from death row people who are permanently mentally incompetent.
The committee’s report notes that it is the first comprehensive examination of the death penalty in California by a state agency or organization since 2008 when the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice “conducted an exhaustive review of the state’s death penalty system and concluded it was dysfunctional.”
Not surprisingly, the report states that it “found that all the problems identified in 2008 have only gotten worse.”
Among the problems the committee cites:
- There are 697 men and women on California’s death row, the largest in the country. Its last execution was in 2006.
- More than 1,000 people have been sentenced to death since 1978 in California. Only 13 executions have taken place since then.
- During that time, 235 death sentences have been reversed as unconstitutional or otherwise improper.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a moratorium on the death penalty in 2018 and ordered the execution chamber to be dismantled.
Publication of this report represents a watershed in California’s death penalty history. If the recommendations in this report are adopted, in their entirety, by piecemeal, or even over the course of a few years, it will be a significant achievement in creating a more just, humane, and less racist criminal justice system.
As DPF board member Stephen F. Rohde said in his coverage of the draft report, “When the story is told about how the death penalty was abolished in California, the work of a little-known legislative committee will deserve an entire chapter.”
The Committee on Revision of the Penal Code (http://www.clrc.ca.gov/CRPC.html) was created in late 2019 by the state Legislature to study California’s penal code and recommend reforms. Five of the seven members were appointed by Gov. Gavin Newsom; the other two were each appointed by the legislative body they represent in the Assembly and Senate.
