A Face in the Wind

Ira Reiner doesn’t have to be a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing. He began to develop an acute meteorological sensitivity as a member of the Board of Trustees of the Los Angeles Community College District. Refining his natural talent as he went along, he became in rapid sequence city controller, city attorney and, most recently, district attorney of Los Angeles County.

In that powerful office only two months, Reiner went public Wednesday with a plan to hurry the population of Death Row to the state gas chamber by limiting the authority of the California Supreme Court to block executions. The problem, as he sees it, is the court’s tendency to cite state laws or the state Constitution in ruling on capital-punishment cases, and such cases can’t be appealed by frustrated prosecutors.

Reiner has the answer: a state constitutional amendment that would require the court to rely solely on federal constitutional principles in death-penalty cases. Prosecutors could then appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, which he says currently has a “more reasonable” attitude toward the death penalty than the California court has.

Polls show that Californians heavily favor capital punishment. You don’t have to be a weatherman to know that this particular wind can blow a politician all the way to Sacramento.