Judy Kerr, the Outreach Coordinator for California Crime Victims for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, has a moving op-ed in the San Francisco Chronicle today about the impact of scheduled executions and the chaos that surrounds them on victims’ families.

We do not expect any more executions to be scheduled in California this year due to a national shortage of one of the three drugs used for lethal injections.

Thank you for your continued support. This success would not have been possible without it.

Sincerely,

The Staff of Death Penalty Focus

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The California Attorney General’s office, headed by Jerry Brown, is continuing to push for executions despite the fact that there are still many unanswered legal questions about the administration of lethal injection.

Please send the Attorney General a message stating your opposition to restarting executions. Albert Brown was scheduled to be executed on September 30 at 9 p.m., but he received a stay from a federal judge. Please ask Jerry Brown to refrain from appealing the stay.

The letter is pasted below, but you can quickly sign the letter online here.

I respectfully request that your office stop seeking executions. There are too many unanswered questions about the execution process; thus, proceeding with the execution of Albert Brown on September 30th would be hasty and reckless. Please do not appeal the stay!

Nearly 30,000 Californians objected to the new lethal injection regulations during a 14 month public comment process. The objections, include, among others, concerns over using a paralytic drug, which the state still intends to use; the enormous cost of carrying out executions; the denial of the media’s right to witness all aspects of the execution, in violation of the First Amendment; and concerns over whether the religious rights of the person to be executed would be protected. None of these problems have been addressed.

Please do everything in your power to ensure that no executions occur while these important questions remain unanswered.

Sincerely,

Sign the letter online.

California State Attorney General Jerry Brown today filed a brief (PDF) with the state Supreme Court today opining that article 1, section 31 of the California Constitution (Prop. 209) is unconstitutional as applied in certain circumstances.

The letter brief was filed in response to the Supreme Court’s request for an opinion regarding Coral Construction v. City and County of San Francisco, a case pending before the Court concerning whether San Francisco’s attempt to remedy longstanding exclusion of minority- and women-owned businesses in its public contracting violates article I, section 31.

The letter stated: “To the extent that the prohibitions against race- and gender-based discrimination in article I, section 31 of the California Constitution (hereafter referred to as section 31) are aligned with the prohibitions enforced under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution, section 31 is constitutional.

“However, to the extent that section 31 is interpreted more broadly to bar race- or gender-conscious programs that would be permissible under the Fourteenth Amendment, it violates the Equal Protection Clause of the federal Constitution, pursuant to Washington v. Seattle School Dist. No. 1 (1982) 458 U.S. 457 (Seattle) and Hunter v. Erickson (1969) 393 U.S. 385 (Hunter). To that extent, section 31 would create an unequal political structure based on race and gender that is not narrowly tailored to achieve a compelling governmental interest.”

“It is unclear precisely what governmental interest section 31 was intended to serve,” the letter also stated. “If it is the interest in protecting all Californians from discrimination based on race or gender, that is concededly a compelling governmental interest. However, there appears to be no factual basis to support a governmental interest in denying preferences that are permissible under the Fourteenth Amendment.

“Ironically, by effectively disadvantaging racial minorities and women in the political process, without an evident compelling governmental reason for doing so, section 31 seems to accomplish the very evil it purported to eliminate, viz. racial and gender discrimination.”

The Equal Justice Society and the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area, on behalf of a coalition of more than 60 organizations and individuals advocating against the constitutionality of Prop. 209, applaud Attorney General Jerry Brown for his position on this issue.

We will continue to argue that the state Supreme Court should take this opportunity to strike down Prop. 209, an initiative responsible for much harm to communities of color, women and to California as a whole.

Download the Attorney General’s letter

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