Usually I’m fairly lukewarm about online petitions. They are often targeted at the wrong person, asking them to do something that they should do free of public influence.
Not so with this one.
I started a petition addressing the CA Attorney General, Kamala Harris, and Governor Brown, asking Ms. Harris not to appeal Judge Carney’s decision from a few days ago, which found the death penalty unconstitutional because of the delays involved in its application.
You can find the petition here.
I am asking YOU, gentle reader, to sign the petition, and to share it far and wide with your friends. Ms. Harris is an elected public official, and her decisions regarding charging and appealing should take into account the will and priorities of her constituents. Those constituents are you.
Ask yourself:
- What can California do for YOU with $150 million in annual savings?
- How much more retribution, deterrence, justice, and fairness are YOU getting from a dysfunctional death row?
- If you are for the death penalty, how do you feel about the rarity of its administration?
- If you oppose the death penalty, how do you feel about joining hundreds of signees that stand behind an argument that seems to make headway where human rights arguments have failed?
- How comfortable are YOU with the prospect of the state making mistakes in death penalty application? Would YOU be okay with the elimination of the post-conviction quality control mechanisms we have in place?
- Finally, are YOU comfortable with the criminal justice energy spent in this state–in time, dollars, public activity–on 724 people, when our correctional system encompasses 170,000 people statewide and locally in whose rehabilitation we could invest?
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