Reaction varies on death penalty order

The reprieve Newsom granted to the state’s 737 death row inmates was accompanied by orders to withdraw the state’s lethal injection protocol and close the execution chamber at San Quentin State Prison, steps he hoped would start to dismantle a system he felt has not enhanced public safety and has also discriminated against defendants who are mentally ill, people of color and those can’t afford legal representation, according to a press release from Newsom’s office. The executive order does not alter inmates’ current convictions or sentences and does not provide for the release of any individuals from prison, according to the release.

“I cannot sign off on executing hundreds and hundreds of human beings knowing, knowing that some of them will be innocent,” he said, according to a live video of his Wednesday press conference.

No inmates have been executed in the state since 2006, when the state’s execution protocol was challenged in court. Having exhausted their state and federal appeals, 25 death row inmates are eligible for an execution date, according to the release.

But for District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe — who deliberated with a team of prosecutors for months before announcing their decision to seek the death penalty in Contreras’ case — Newsom’s decision is at odds with the way California voters voted on three recent ballot initiatives. In the last seven years, two initiatives to end the death penalty failed to pass and Proposition 66, which he said sought to streamline the process, was approved by voters in 2016, noted Wagstaffe.

“Three times the people of this state have voiced their opinion,” he said. “Gov. Newsom has decided that that’s not relevant.”

Wagstaffe described the decision to seek the death penalty against a defendant as the most significant decision his office makes and said Contreras’ is the only case in which he made the call to pursue capital punishment in his eight-year tenure as district attorney. He added he wouldn’t seek the death penalty as a means of striking a plea bargain, noting he would only pursue it if he feels a defendant truly deserves that level of punishment.

“If it’s the right thing to do, then we’ll do it,” he said. “Those decisions aren’t made in two weeks, they’re made over months and years.”

Wagstaffe said the only defendant sentenced to death in the county in the last 25 years is Alberto Alvarez, who received a death sentence for the 2006 murder of East Palo Alto police Officer Richard May in a case Wagstaffe prosecuted.

‘There’s never closure’

For Alvarez’s defense attorney Eric Liberman, Newsom’s decision was welcome news. Liberman said he was somewhat ambivalent about the death penalty before he worked on Alvarez’s case, but came to believe the punishment wasn’t appropriate even for those who have committed murder. He said he has carried the burden of his client receiving the death penalty since the day Alvarez’s verdict was announced and wasn’t convinced after trying Alvarez’s case that the death penalty can bring the closure many say the families of victims feel when a defendant is sentenced to death.

“When you suffer a loss such as this, it’s something that maybe time helps heal but there’s never closure,” he said.

Liberman said he asked the jury in Alvarez’s trial to consider whether it is fair to judge someone based on something they do in the blink of an eye, and said he still feels it is unfair to judge people based on the worst thing they have done. In the some 10 years since Alvarez was convicted and sentenced to death, Liberman said he has visited him at San Quentin State Prison several times and noted he appears in handcuffs during visits and is otherwise locked up for much of the day.

Liberman said his client understood the possible consequences of his charges but was much more worried about how the sentence would affect his family.

“He was much more worried about how this would affect his mom, his dad and his sisters … and I think that remains through today,” he said.

‘Abuse of power’

One of several groups backing Proposition 66 in 2016, the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation alleged in a press release Newsom substituted his own opinion for the repeated decisions of the state’s voters. Kent Scheidegger, the foundation’s director, noted California residents voted for the death penalty 11 times since 1972.

“The governor’s decision to grant a blanket reprieve to prevent executions is an abuse of power and a slap in the face of the families of murder victims,” he said.

Scheidegger said in an email he does not believe there are any judicial challenges available to the reprieve portion of Newsom’s decision, and indicated any political actions that could be taken have yet to be decided. He added the group may challenge in court Newsom’s decision to impede the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s ability to carry out executions, which he noted is a violation of the penal code.

Future unknown

Wagstaffe noted Newsom does not have the authority to end the death penalty in California and in his announcement Wednesday indicated he won’t enforce it. He didn’t anticipate Newsom’s decision to keep any ongoing capital punishment cases from moving forward, noting the law is still on the books and prosecutors are sworn to uphold the law.

Contreras’ defense attorney Peter Arian declined to comment specifically on his client’s case because it is pending trial. Charged with murder, oral copulation of a child under 10 years old and child molestation with great bodily injury, Contreras is expected to appear for trial April 6, 2020.

But Arian said in an email Newsom’s order begs the question of whether it is fiscally responsible for district attorneys to continue seeking the death penalty, noting the defense and prosecution of these cases is very expensive, as is housing the inmates on death row and decades of litigation that follow a death verdict. According to Newsom’s office, California spent $5 billion on a death penalty system that has executed 13 people since 1978.

“The death penalty offers no closure to victims and actually prolongs their pain,” said Arian. “Whether or not people agree with the death penalty in theory, in practice in California it is a failure.”

anna@smdailyjournal.com

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