San Quentin’s gas chamber may soon be used again

Press, 23 October 1978, Page 8

San Quentin’s gas chamber may soon be used again

By

WILLIAM SCOBIE

Los Angeles Californians will go to the polls on November 7 to vote in a referendum that could give the state the most rigorlous death-penalty law in the | United States. It is part of a movement gathering :nomlentum around the nation to I put the noose, the gas chamI her and the electric chair jback in business. i One year ago, the California legislature backed a bill jto restore the death penalty [for a handful of categories of imurder, overriding the veto I of Governor Jerry Brown. Since then, six men have[ been sent to San Quentin’s; death row, but the new law is not tough enough for State i Senator John Briggs, who) (made an unsuccessful bid for) I the Republican gubernatorial) nomination this year, and still j | hopes to ride to higher office I lon the law-and-order band-) wagon. Briggs, who is 48, repre-) sents Orange County, home! of Disneyland, Richard) Nixon, and the world’s first I Idrive-in church. He is spon-l | sor not only of Proposition 7,) as the death penalty initiative' in the November ballot is) known, but also of Proposi-I tion 6, aimed at ridding Cali-! [ fornia’s schools of all known I homosexual teachers and school administrators. Briggs says: “If Charles Manson sent his drug-crazed killers out to slaughter innocent people tomorrow, he couldn’t be sentenced to ) death under present law.” | Proposition 7 would remedv | that situation. “It would give )us the most effective death | penalty in the nation.”

) Opinion polls suggest that is what Californians want: Proposition 7 is favoured bv a large majority of voters questioned. It would restore capital [punishment for a list of firsti degree murders as long as the senator’s arm — murder for ) hire, murder in the course of I burglary, torture murders, sex murders. murders in ambush, murders of police[men, firemen and elected ) officials, murder by explosive, [murder for financial gain — and much more. In addition, the driver of a getaway car in a crime involving murder could be sentenced to death: life imorisonment without possibility of parole would be introduced! [ for a new range of crimes: i I and death would be manda- ‘ torv if judge or jury decided that “aggravating circumstances” outweighed “mitigating circumstances.” Six vears have passed since [ the United States Sunreme | Court threw out captial punishment laws around the land, | on grounds that they were [often “freakishly” imposed, ) with heavy discrimination ) against blacks. Various states [ rushed to write new statutes. [ and the Court upheld three of 'these in 1976. Soon, courts and legislatures everywhere [ were succumbing to pressure [ to restore the supreme pen- ! ! altv. More than 30 states now [have capital-punishment laws, and more than 400 persons wait in death row cells — most of them in southern prisons. A majority of those convicted are white, but defence lawyers say that

racial discrimination, has crept back into the death penalty muddle in a new and hidden way. The newly passed laws arebeing widely used against those who kill whites; hardly ever against the murderers of blacks. Opponents of Proposition 7 say the proposal will lead California down the path followed by

Florida, w'hich may soon become the execution capital of the nation. More than 100 people are on death row in that state, 92 per cent of them for killing whites, only 8 per cent for killing blacks. The first execution could come before the year is out. “Discrimination against the poor and the black is the number-one argument against the death penalty,” says Mary Saylin, vice-presi-dent of the American Civil Liberties Union in California. “Non-white on death row out-number their proportion in the population by □ver 400 per cent. Since) 19.30, 3859 people have been) sxecuted in the United) States — and 2065 of them! yere black.” A second argument put!

; ] forward by the “No on 7” [committee is that the crimiI! nal-justice system is far [from .infallible: in the last .ICO years there have been at least 77 wrongful con-) victions -for murder, with ■ execution of eight innocent I people. Recently in California five . members of a motor-cycle i gang were convicted of the I

torture-murder of a young drifter. A waitress gave a detailed description of how she saw the gang slash and mutilate their victim in the desert. But 15 months later another prison inmate confessed to the killing, and the! waitress admitted that her) statements were a fabric-! ation. She said that police) questioning had “swept her! away.” Governor Brown, who as a ■ young man unsuccessfully) pleaded with his father, the! then governor, to spare the' ‘"red-light bandit,” Caryl) Chessman, from the gas chamber, has constantly : opposed the penalty in office. i “Statistics show that it is not a deterrent to murder,” ; he says. “For me, this would

be a society where we do not attempt to use death as a punishment.” Both sides in the debate have their statistics about the effectiveness of the penalty as a deterrent. But the Briggs faction, which receives most of its campaign funding from fundamentalist Churches (Of which California has more than 1000), also believes in an eye for an eye. “Brown ignores the fact that murderers are inflicting death as a punishment on the innocent,” says: Briggs’s ally, State Senator George Deukmejian. Unless there is a dramatic reversal of popular opinion. Proposition 7 seems destined; to pass. With Governor I Brown’s newly appointed; Chief Justice, Ms Rose Bird.. a known opponent of capital! punishment, already under ) fire as “soft On crime” and) threatened with removal [ from offiec, victory for “7”) would be a serious setback) for the Brown Adminis-j tration. And the governor himself may soon be confronted with the problem that faced his father in 1960: to obey his conscience, and reprieve 1 condemned man; or bow to the will of the majority, ind put back to work San Quentin’s green-painted steel ’as chamber. O.F.N.S. copyright.