3 former California governors back proposed death penalty initiative
SAN FRANCISCO — Three former California governors are set to announce their endorsement Thursday of a proposed initiative sponsors say would end lengthy death penalty appeals and speed up executions.
Former governors George Deukmejian, Pete Wilson and Gray Davis will announce at a news conference the launch of an initiative drive for signatures to qualify the proposed constitutional amendment for the November ballot.
The measure, if qualified, would ignite the second statewide debate on the death penalty in two years.
A ballot proposal that would have ended capital punishment in California narrowly lost in 2012, with 48% of voters in favor and 52% against.
The new proposal would establish five-year court deadlines for deciding death row appeals, transfer most death penalty cases from the California Supreme Court to lower courts, and allow capital inmates to be spread among the general prison population.
It also would require the condemned to work in prison, remove any threat of state sanctions from doctors who advise the state on lethal injection procedures, and exempt the execution protocols from a state administrative law that requires extensive public review.
California now has more than 700 people on death row, and the last inmate was executed in 2006.
The state currently has no court-approved method of lethally injecting the condemned, and drugs to do so have been difficult to obtain. The state also has had trouble recruiting lawyers willing to handle capital appeals, which can take decades to be resolved in state and federal courts.
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