The families of murder victims have already lived through the worst thing that can happen to anyone. Now, years and sometimes decades later, a vain and out-of-touch governor is victimizing them again. He has decided that his own conscience outweighs the verdicts of juries, the rulings of courts, and the repeated votes of the people of California.
To be clear, my objection is not to the death penalty itself. Reasonable people disagree about capital punishment. Californians have debated it openly and settled it at the ballot box, rejecting repeal in 2012 and again in 2016. My objection is to a governor who spent eight years in office without pressing that case to the voters, and who has now chosen to wipe it all away with the stroke of a pen on his way out the door. That is not leadership. It is the conduct of a man who thinks he is a king.
California does not have a king. It has juries: 6,756 ordinary citizens who sat through these trials and unanimously sentenced these killers to death. It has judges who reviewed those verdicts, and voters who chose to keep the law. A governor who overrides all of them, and times it so he never has to face those voters again, is not acting out of conscience. He is acting out of entitlement. Conscience asks what is right. Entitlement asks who can stop me.
Vern Pierson – El Dorado County District Attorney
Every case deserves individual consideration. Every victimโs family deserves to be heard.
In a new Los Angeles Times op-ed, CJLF President & CEO Anne Marie Schubert and El Dorado County District Attorney Vern Pierson urge Governor Newsom to reject blanket commutation of Californiaโs death sentences.
PORAC shares their call for a thoughtful, case-by-case approach that respects the justice process and gives victimsโ families a voice.
Read the full op-ed: Contributor: https://f.mtr.cool/735ybtu76n
El Dorado County District Attorney Criminal Justice Legal Foundation