California’s Death Penalty: Criminal Justice Advocates File Petition Highlighting Evidence Alleging Racial Discrimination

By ACLU Photos: Wikimedia Commons\YouTube Screenshots SAN FRANCISCO — Tuesday, a consortium of nationally renowned civil rights organizations, legal organizations, and a law firm filed an extraordinary writ petition in the Supreme Court of California challenging the state’s death penalty statute as racially discriminatory and unconstitutional under the Equal Protection guarantees of the California Constitution. This is the first time a petition of this nature has been filed with the court. The original petition to the Supreme Court of California was filed by the Legal Defense Fund (LDF), the American Civil Liberties Union Capital Punishment Project (ACLU CPP), the ACLU of Northern California (ACLU NorCal), WilmerHale, and the Office of the State Public Defender (OSPD). This challenge was brought on behalf of petitioners OSPD, Witness to Innocence, LatinoJustice PRLDEF, the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, and Eva Paterson, co-founder of the Equal Justice Society. The evidence of racial bias in California’s implementation of the death penalty is pervasive and well-documented. Numerous empirical studies by leading social science experts reveal troubling disparities: Black people are about five times more likely to be sentenced to death when compared to similarly situated non-Black defendants, while Latino people are at least three times...