California should rethink executions, says former Illinois gov.

By DON THOMPSON
Associated Press Writer

SACRAMENTO (AP) California should consider halting executions while it takes ``an in-depth look'' at whether it administers the death penalty fairly, former Illinois Gov. George Ryan told state lawmakers Tuesday.

Repeated failures in Illinois' system prompted Ryan to commute the sentences of all his state's 167 condemned inmates before he left office this year.

The public seems to favor the death penalty, ``but they want a system that's fair, just and accurate,'' Ryan told the Senate Select Committee on the California Correctional System. ``If you're poor and minority, you haven't got a prayer.''

Gov. Gray Davis said he welcomes continuing review of state safeguards he believes already are adequate to ensure no innocents are executed in California. That particularly means providing the accused with good defense attorneys, and re-examining DNA evidence where possible in old cases to confirm convictions, he said.

``To our knowledge, we don't have a problem in California,'' said Davis, who met privately with Ryan. ``But those of us who believe in the death penalty have a special burden to go out of our way to make sure that all the protections and procedures are in place, and we do that on a monthly basis.''

California's Death Row is disproportionately black, poor, mentally ill or borderline retarded, said opponents, lawmakers and legal experts. About 60 percent of death sentences upheld by California courts are later overturned by federal appeals.

California's criminal justice system has some of the same shortfalls as Illinois' system, testified attorney Robert Sanger, who authored a report comparing California's death penalty system with the 85 recommendations of the Illinois Commission appointed by Ryan in January 2000.

For instance, California meets just one of the 19 recommendations designed to keep false confessions and incomplete or misleading testimony from leading to improper convictions and sentences. Death penalty qualifiers are so broad that virtually any murder can bring a death sentence if the prosecutor is so inclined, Sanger said.

``We clearly do not comply with over 90 percent of the recommendations in Illinois,'' said Sanger, a board member of Death Penalty Focus, which favors a California moratorium. California has some protections, ``but they don't go far enough.''

But experts from the state attorney general's office and district attorneys association said California's hasn't seen the same problems that prompted Ryan's decision in Illinois. All 622 inmates on California's Death Rows are there because they committed horrible murders, they said.

``California's not Illinois,'' said James Anderson, an Alameda County assistant prosecutor who chairs a California District Attorneys Association death penalty committee. ``Their system may be broken. Ours is not.''

For instance, California limits testimony by informants who would benefit from false testimony against a fellow inmate. There are safeguards against impaneling an all-white jury to try a black defendant. And there are no cases where police torture was alleged to have prompted a confession, said Dane Gillette, a senior assistant attorney general who has supervised the state's death penalty cases since 1992.

Unlike Illinois, where 13 inmates were exonerated as 12 were executed, Gillette asserted that California has had no instances where condemned inmates were later found to be innocent. California also provides better-trained, publicly financed defense attorneys, he said.

Nor have studies shown that race has played a disproportionate role in convictions, Gillette said. While there are regional differences, he argued that every California prosecutor works under the same legal guidelines.

For Carole Carrington, who testified Tuesday, the biggest problem with California's death penalty is that it's not carried out quickly enough. She said she and her husband, Francis, don't expect to live long enough to see Cary Stayner's execution for murdering their daughter, granddaughter and a family friend at Yosemite National Park in 1999.

Executions may not bring emotional closure to survivors, she said, but are valuable for ridding society of ``a cancer ... we just do not need.'' Their Carole Sund/Carrington Memorial Reward Foundation has since offered rewards in 30 states and helped apprehend 17 murder suspects.

Ryan's commutations sparked a nationwide debate. Since leaving office in January, Ryan, a Republican, has been traveling the nation urging students to write their legislators to ask for reviews of their states' systems. Four Bay Area counties and nine cities have passed resolutions calling on Davis to issue a moratorium on capital punishment.

Davis added to the controversy by asking lawmakers for $220 million in bond money to construct a new Death Row at San Quentin, as the state struggles with a record budget deficit.

The committee took no action Tuesday, though the chairwoman, Sen. Gloria Romero, D-Los Angeles, said she thinks an in-depth study is needed.

``We are talking about the ultimate punishment,'' Romero said. ``Mistakes cannot be corrected. All transactions are final.''

On the Net:

www.deathpenalty.org

http://www.cdaa.org

(Copyright 2003 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)