Wilson Renews Tough Talk on Death Penalty

Gov. Pete Wilson vowed Wednesday to make the death penalty a feared deterrent to violent crime in California and proposed locking up child molesters for life, saying it would be “a kindness” by preventing them from molesting again.

In his first appearance in Orange County since becoming governor, Wilson renewed, and escalated, the tough-on-crime talk of his election campaign in an address to the California Police Chiefs Assn. in Anaheim. He proposed legislation that would limit a Death Row convict’s ability to delay or avoid execution by repeatedly appealing a conviction to higher courts.

On another matter, Wilson said later in a question-and-answer session with reporters that he hopes the five-year drought will serve to create a consensus among warring water factions in California on a long-term water development program.

During his appearance before the law enforcement group, Wilson said legislation will be required both from Congress and the state Legislature to limit the length of Death Row appeals. If the Democratic-controlled Legislature fails to approve such a measure, Wilson told the chiefs, he will lead a petition campaign to put the issue on the statewide ballot.

The governor declined to speculate on when California might put a criminal to death; the state’s last execution was in 1967. But referring to ongoing appeals in the 12-year-old case of Death Row inmate Robert Alton Harris, Wilson said, “This is a situation which, frankly, is intolerable for the very simple reason that justice delayed is not only justice denied, but it totally undermines the whole deterrent concept of capital punishment.

“For once, I can’t argue with the liberals who say that the death penalty in California has not proved to be a deterrent. It hasn’t, because it has not been enforced. It cannot be a deterrent until it is enforced. And it must be our job to see to it that the law is changed and that it is enforced.”

The chiefs at that point interrupted Wilson’s speech with applause.

As in his campaign, Wilson promised to seek a life prison term for anyone caught dealing drugs to pregnant women, to increase sentences for all convicted rapists threefold and to eliminate time off for good prison behavior for those convicted of violent crimes.

But his talk about enforcing the death penalty was more specific and more emphatic than before. As for child molesters, Wilson said the state should tell them “we will not let you out ever again” because molesters usually repeat their crimes. A life term, he added, might constitute “a kindness to the child molester, to see to it that they are placed in a situation where they cannot do that kind of harm (again) and perhaps can do something useful.”

Capital punishment was not a pivotal issue in the 1990 campaign for governor because Feinstein also supported the death penalty. But the Wilson campaign constantly pushed crime as an issue. Wilson frequently noted that he helped lead the campaign to remove Chief Justice Rose Elizabeth Bird, who had opposed the death penalty, from the state Supreme Court. And he sponsored Proposition 115 in the June primary to speed up court procedures and require judges to impose tougher sentences.

Even with Proposition 115, Wilson said Wednesday that California law dealing with “dangerous, violent predators” still is “dangerously, absurdly lenient.” He said the message must be sent to some judges that their job is to deter crime and “not to behave like hotel room clerks at convention time,” turning violent criminals out of prison to commit crimes again.

In his remarks supporting a long-term water development plan, the governor alluded to projects already planned by the state Department of Water Resources to capture and store heavy winter runoff in normal or wet years and use it during dry periods.

When a reporter suggested that old water animosities are likely to return once the drought ends, Wilson said he hopes “people will be wise enough to understand that it can all happen again. . . . We’d be much smarter to increase off-stream storage capacity so that winter storms can be remembered in the dry times of August and September with gratitude--because they filled reservoirs--rather than envy and regret.”

Environmentalists and some Northern California water groups have opposed the diversion of any more Northern California water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, even during high-flow periods.