News and Developments 2010: Editorials

In an editorial, the Los Angeles Times has called on Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California to commute Kevin Cooper's death sentence before leaving office in early January 2011.  The Times noted that considerable doubt has been cast upon the evidence used to convict Cooper of four murders that occurred in San Bernadino County in 1983. In particular, they cite the analysis offered by federal Judge William Fletcher of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, who dissented from the court's refusal to review Cooper's case.  According to the editorial, "Fletcher wrote that Cooper 'is probably innocent of the crimes for which the state of California is about to execute him.'  Whether or not that's true, the judge makes a compelling argument that sheriff's office investigators planted evidence in order to convict Cooper and discarded or disregarded other evidence pointing to other killers — creating not just reasonable but serious doubt about his guilt."  The editorial concluded, "This newspaper opposes the death penalty under any circumstances, and we wouldn't object if the governor commuted the sentences of all 697 people on California's death row. But execution is especially outrageous when the prisoner may be innocent. Gov. Schwarzenegger should commute Cooper's sentence." Read the full editorial below.

An op-ed by Bob Herbert of the New York Times highlights issues raised by former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens that changed his mind on the death penalty in the U.S. Herbert cites information collected by the Death Penalty Information Center and points to shoddy defense and state misconduct in the deliberate withholding of evidence as prominent abuses in the system. “Executions have been upheld in cases in which defense lawyers slept through crucial proceedings. Alcoholic, drug-addicted and incompetent lawyers — as well as lawyers who had been suspended or otherwise disciplined for misconduct — have been assigned to indigent defendants.”  According to Herbert, “The egregious problems identified by Justice Stevens (and other prominent Americans who have changed their minds in recent years about capital punishment) have always been the case. The awful evidence has always been right there for all to see, but mostly it has been ignored. The death penalty in the United States has never been anything but an abomination — a grotesque, uncivilized, overwhelmingly racist affront to the very idea of justice.” Read full op-ed below.

On October 29, a New York Times editorial raised many concerns regarding the recent execution of Native American Jeffrey Landrigan in Arizona.  The Times said “the system failed him at almost every level, most disturbingly at the Supreme Court.” Landrigan’s execution garnered national attention because a nationwide shortage of sodium thiopental forced the state to seek the drug from foreign suppliers. Despite repeated orders from a federal District Court judge, Arizona refused to divulge the source of their lethal drug supply.  The judge stayed the execution based on these concerns, but the stay was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in a 5-4 ruling that said there was “no evidence in the record to suggest that the drug obtained from a foreign source is unsafe.” But, as the editorial pointed out, "There was no evidence — either way — because Arizona defied orders to provide it."  In addition to concerns about the drugs used in Landrigan’s execution, recent statements made by Landrigan’s sentencing judge questioned the appropriateness of a death sentence in this case. Judge Cheryl Hendrix, who presided over Landrigan's trial, recently told the Arizona Board of Executive Clemency that she would not have sentenced Landrigan to death if his trial attorney presented evidence of the defendant’s brain damage and other problems.  The Board's vote was 2-2, so clemency was denied. Read full editorial below.