Death Row Appeals

Re “Justice Demands Reform in the Appeal Process,” Column Right, Dec. 14:

The death penalty issue is the one issue on which I have changed my stance more than any other issue. Much more. Atty. Gen. Daniel Lungren’s column has caused me to change my mind once again.

Most of Lungren’s column had to do with reform legislation and the people on death row. The second paragraph from the end deals with why: “While these convicted murderers flood state and federal courts with briefs and petitions, the mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters and children of their dead victims suffer the pain of wounds that wait to be healed.” Wow. Lungren wants to kill people because that will make other people feel good. This man is a barbarian qualified to run the Roman circus but hardly qualified for what should be the dispassionate position of attorney general.

I agree with Lungren in that when one person is killed, others suffer; others are punished. Knowing that, how does Lungren deal with fact that in his haste to kill the killers he will punish the innocent mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters and children of the killers he kills?

ALAN THOMPSON

Ojai

Lungren’s rush to judgment ignores why the framers enshrined the “Great Writ” of habeas corpus in the U.S. Constitution, even before the Bill of Rights was adopted. Access to the federal courts to remedy constitutional violations by police and prosecutors is the last resort for death row inmates who are innocent or have been denied due process.

Contrary to what Lungren calls the “abuse” of the federal habeas corpus process,the American Bar Assn. reports that over 40% of such petitions are found to be meritorious. That’s an extraordinary batting average for any appellate process.

Every week injustices are discovered where police and prosecutors have suppressed evidence and introduced false testimony to win convictions at any cost. Often the proof of such misdeeds is not discovered until well after the arbitrary one-year limit Lungren wants to impose.

Just ask Clarence Brandley, who spent nine years on death row, Rolando Cruz (11 years), Robert Charles Cruz (14 years), or Mitchell Blazak (over 20 years) before the evidence of their wrongful convictions was unearthed. What Lungren snidely calls the death row inmates’ “dexterity at procedural gamesmanship” is nothing less than what the Constitution guarantees every citizen.

STEPHEN F. ROHDE

Los Angeles

Almost eight years ago, one of my friends was brutally raped and murdered. The murderer remained at the crime scene and was arrested. About a year later, the jury convicted him of murder in the first degree, and, because the murderer showed no remorse after the killing, decided he should be executed. He was sentenced to death; but his first appeal, before the state Court of Appeal, happened only this year--six years after the verdict of the trial court.

Why the delay? It took five years, according to the state attorney general’s office, to prepare a transcript of a two-week trial (a transcript which could have been prepared in just over a week)!

We’re talking about approximately 2,000 pages of transcript.

Lungren is right in that justice demands reform in the appeal process. But the problem, at least locally, seems to have less to do with constitutional guarantees and protections than ordinary ineptness, stupidity and laziness.

LESLIE ZADOR

Los Angeles