Imagining a new life outside after 40 years on death row
Expert: California had ‘an honorary death penalty’
BOLINAS – Douglas “Chief” Stankewitz got up Wednesday in the early morning darkness. That’s when he meditates and exercises and reads. He turned on the television and caught the Channel 7 news. It was around 5:30. And he heard.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom planned to declare a moratorium on the death penalty that day, dismantle the death chamber. Because capital punishment, Newsom said, is immoral and expensive. Kills the innocent along with the guilty. Targets the black, the brown, the poor.
“I just thought, ‘It’s about time, about time someone stepped up who had the power and authority to do so,’” Stankewitz said.
He was the first person to land on California’s death row after capital punishment was reinstated in 1978. He was 20 then. He will be 61 in May.
He is still on death row, sentenced for the kidnapping and murder of Theresa Graybeal, 22, who had gone to the store for a bag of dog food. His case is making its arduous way through the courts. His next hearing is Friday in Fresno.
As the news about Newsom rippled through San Quentin, Stankewitz said in a telephone interview Thursday, there were no celebrations, no cheers among the 737 condemned men on the largest death row in the United States.
“Some have talked about it,” Stankewitz said. “Other ones, I guess, feel numbed. They don’t believe what’s happening . ... It’s like when people get sentenced to death. They get numb for a week or two. Reality hasn’t set in.”
No matter how you feel about capital punishment, it
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