‘We’ll Be Living in the Jungle’ : Bradley Tells Inmates Why He Backs Death Penalty

Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley told county jail prisoners in Northern California Wednesday that without the death penalty “all of us will be living in the jungle with no security, no protection.”

About 100 men and women inmates of San Francisco County Jail listened silently while Bradley, an expected candidate for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination, strongly defended capital punishment as a deterrent. He called it a positive force for separating killers “. . . from you and me and the rest of our society.”

Bradley, featured speaker at the jail’s annual “Be Somebody” series of addresses, said: “I believe the death penalty is necessary. I support it.”

While vigorously defending capital punishment in a question-and-answer period after his talk, Bradley declined to say at a press conference afterward whether he will support or oppose California Chief Justice Rose Elizabeth Bird. Her reconfirmation by voters in November is being opposed by death penalty advocates who charge that she and other justices have thwarted the capital punishment law.

Bradley said that advisers--”lawyers and non-lawyers”--are studying Supreme Court decisions, including 11 death penalty reversals announced last New Year’s Eve.

“They are trying to look at all facets of the issue,” said Bradley, describing the kind of information he is getting to help him make his decision.

“I have not made a decision on that matter,” he said. “There is ample time. It is not something that has caused me to rush to judgment. At the appropriate time I will make a statement on the issue.”

The issue is a difficult one for the mayor politically. Gov. George Deukmejian is a strong opponent of Bird. If Bradley backs Bird, Deukmejian and other Republicans are expected to use it against him as they try to capitalize on what they perceive as public concern over crime and discontent with the court.

But if Bradley opposes Bird, he risks losing important parts of the Democratic constituency, including some liberal and women’s groups.

His words on the death penalty were some of his strongest so far on the subject.

Bradley has said he has always supported capital punishment, although in his 1982 race against Deukmejian he avoided ringing endorsements of it, saying only that he would enforce the law.

That was not the case on Wednesday.

“I have seen far too many people killed,” he told an inmate questioner. “I have seen far too much violence in our society. I see some of it today with people who have no compassion, no concern, no idea of the consequence of their acts.

“So they would rather kill at the blink of an eye, go into a store and pull a robbery and when somebody doesn’t move fast enough, they blow them away. I believe that the death penalty is necessary and I support it.

“There’s got to be some way that we remove them, that we separate them from you and me and the rest of our society,” he said of people who take the lives of “innocent people.”

“Otherwise all of us will be living in the jungle with no security, no protection. That’s the only purpose of the death penalty.”