Capital Cases Before Court Will Take Years to Resolve

Even if no one else were ever sentenced to death in California, the state Supreme Court would have years of work deciding the cases before it.

The court is inundated with death penalty cases. More than 30 fully argued cases await rulings, in some instances for months--one has been pending before the court since October, 1982. Lawyers in more than 30 other cases have filed written briefs and await calls from the court for oral arguments. Stacked up behind those cases are another 95 cases for which no written arguments have yet been filed.

In addition to the gravity attendant to any case in which the defendant’s life is at stake, capital cases often present complex legal issues not addressed in other cases before the court. Trial records in each case weigh several pounds and can fill a filing cabinet. Justice Joseph R. Grodin estimated that records in death cases are “at least 20 times the length of the record in the average criminal appeal.”

Grodin pointed out that unlike other appeals to the Supreme Court, no mid-level court analyzes the issues in death cases or culls the facts. Under the state Constitution, that job is left to the seven justices. and their staff. Echoing sentiments of other members of the court, Grodin called for study of “alternatives to the present system.”

But several proposals for easing the workload have been made and rejected, and for now, no end is in sight.

The current population of Death Row is 167, and it is growing this year at a rate of one inmate a month. In all, more than 195 men have been sentenced to death, more than in any other state except Florida and Texas. (Some of those sentenced in the past are not on Death Row now because their cases were reversed or they died.)

Justice Malcolm M. Lucas believes that the court can handle its capital case workload, but said in a written statement that he and his staff members spend a fourth to half of their time working on death penalty cases.

“Unless something is done soon,” Lucas said in a speech last year, “the California Supreme Court will become a court devoted primarily to the death cases.”