THE DEATH PENALTY LAW

This is how California’s death penalty law works

THE LAW

California’s death penalty law was adopted by voters in 1978. It requires execution or life imprisonment without possibility of parole for first-degree murder with “special circumstances.”

Special circumstances include:

- Intentional murder for financial gain.

- Murder committed because of the victim’s race, religion or nationality.

- Multiple murders or torture murder.

- Murder by a hidden bomb, a bomb sent through the mail, or by poison.

- Murder by a person lying in wait.

- Murder committed to avoid arrest or escape from custody.

- Murder carried out during the commission of, attempted commission of, or flight from the following crimes: robbery, kidnaping, rape, sodomy, lewd and lascivious acts upon a child under age 14, forced oral copulation, burglary, arson or train wrecking.

- Murder of a police officer, federal law enforcement officer, prosecutor, judge or firefighter engaged in official duties.

- Murder of a witness to a crime, if the murder was to prevent testimony or in retailiation for testimony.

- Political assassination.

- A defendant previously convicted of first- or second- degree murder.

THE TRIAL

The trial is conducted in phases.

- First, jurors must decide the guilt or innocence of the defendant and, if they find him guilty, whether the murder included special circumstances.

- If a defendant is convicted of murder with special circumstances, the same jury then considers whether to impose the death sentence or life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.

- The law requires that in determining punishment, jurors consider the aggravating and mitigating elements in the crime and that if aggravating circumstances outweigh mitigating factors, the jury must impose death.

- The state Supreme Court has limited aggravating circumstances essentially to felony crimes on the defendant’s record, plus the circumstances of the crime at hand. Anything--from a bad childhood to drug addiction--can be presented by the defense in mitigation of the crime.

THE APPEAL

Appeal of a death sentence to the California Supreme Court is automatic, but the process usually takes years. If the Supreme Court affirms the sentence, the defendant may appeal through the federal courts to the U.S. Supreme Court.

If that appeal fails, the defendant may use the same appeal route under what are called habeas corpus proceedings, which allow him to raise virtually any legal issue, including ones not raised at the trial or on previous appeal.

Aside from the courts, the governor may commute a death sentence.