Court: D.A.s can’t try to restart executions
District attorneys in California can’t go to federal court to propose or defend the state’s death penalty methods or to seek to resume executions once Gov. Gavin Newsom’s moratorium is lifted, a U.S. appeals court ruled Thursday.
The chief prosecutors in San Mateo, San Bernardino and Riverside counties sought in March to intervene in a longrunning case over the constitutionality of California’s lethal injection procedures, a case that was put on hold when Newsom ordered a halt to executions in March 2019. The district attorneys accused Newsom, then-Attorney General Xavier Becerra and his successor, Rob Bonta, of colluding with lawyers for Death Row inmates, and said they should be allowed to enter the case.
But the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco said execution methods are determined by the state and its officials, not the county district attorneys who seek and obtain death sentences.
“District attorneys have neither the authority to choose a method of execution, nor the authority to represent the state entity that makes that choice,” Judge William Fletcher said in the 2-1 ruling, which upheld a federal judge’s refusal to allow the prosecutors to intervene in the case.
Judge Danielle Forrest agreed with the denial on narrower grounds. In dissent, Judge Lawrence VanDyke agreed with the district attorneys that Newsom and Bonta are thwarting the will of the voters who refused to repeal the death penalty in 2016 while approving Proposition 66, an initiative aimed at speeding up executions.
“As the district attorneys argue, the attorney general is not here ‘to represent the interests of the people,’ ” VanDyke said, quoting the prosecutors’ court filing. “Proposition 66 enshrines in statute the will of the people to continue executions, while the governor’s executive order is explicitly opposed to any executions in California.”
The case dates from 2006, when California last executed a prisoner, and was filed in federal court under the constitutional right to be free of cruel and unusual punishment. Federal judges have ruled since then that the state’s injection procedures, equipment and staff training created an undue risk of a prolonged and agonizing death.
After Newsom’s moratorium, inmates dismissed their suit but agreed with then-Attorney General Becerra’s office that they could reinstate the case if the moratorium ended and would not face execution until the legal issues were resolved.
That is the agreement the district attorneys want to undo. In arguing for intervention in the case, they noted that Newsom, represented by the attorney general, had not only barred executions, but had also dismantled the death chamber at San Quentin State Prison and withdrawn the state’s previously proposed procedures for lethal injections.
Thursday’s ruling upheld a decision by U.S. District Judge Richard Seeborg of San Francisco, who said it was up to the governor and attorney general, not local prosecutors, to represent the state on death penalty issues.