California’s death penalty system is in the midst of a reckoning that has been decades in the making, and the numbers behind it are hard to ignore. Over the past five years, every single person sentenced to death in the state has been Black or Latino. The last white defendant to receive a death sentence was handed down back in mid-2021.
This isn’t a statistical fluke. It reflects a long-standing pattern of racial disparity embedded in how California applies its harshest punishment — one that advocates argue courts can no longer afford to sidestep.
Two years ago, the Office of the State Public Defender, along with several civil rights groups, took an unusual legal path: filing what functions as a civil rights lawsuit directly with the California Supreme Court. The move came after decades in which lower courts repeatedly failed to meaningfully engage with claims of racial bias in capital sentencing.
The petition leans on more than a dozen empirical studies, arguing that the way California carries out capital punishment runs afoul of equal protection guarantees written into the state Constitution. In May, the state Supreme Court agreed the case had merit enough to proceed, sending it to Sacramento Superior Court for further review.
The research cited spans four decades and paints a troubling picture. Black defendants are up to eight times more likely, and Latino defendants up to six times more likely, to be sentenced to death compared with other defendants. Cases involving white victims are also more likely to end in a death sentence than those involving Black or Latino victims.
That bias doesn’t just shape outcomes — it raises the stakes for wrongful convictions. Since 1981, eight people have been exonerated and released from California’s death row. All eight were men of color.
Concerns over this kind of bias were central to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s decision to halt executions in the state. His 2019 executive order establishing the moratorium specifically noted that death sentences have been “unevenly and unfairly applied to people of color.” The data since then hasn’t offered much reassurance: Of the 29 people sentenced to death since the moratorium began, 25 are people of color.
A governor’s moratorium, however, is not permanent — a future administration could reverse it at any time. That’s part of why advocates say a definitive court ruling is essential. Only the courts can settle whether the deep racial disparities baked into the state’s capital punishment system make it unconstitutional.
For years, defendants and their attorneys tried to get courts to seriously examine these disparities, only to be met with procedural gridlock. Troy Ashmus’ case illustrates the problem. Sentenced to death in 1986, Ashmus filed a federal habeas petition in 1998 challenging California’s death penalty system under the Eighth Amendment, backed by substantial evidence of racial bias.
What followed were more than two decades of delays. It wasn’t until 2020 — 22 years after he first raised the issue — that Ashmus finally appeared before a superior court judge. But before a ruling could be issued, he died of COVID-19, and his case was dismissed without ever being decided.
Even Ashmus’ case, frustrating as it was, represented a best-case scenario in some ways: he at least had legal representation and resources behind his appeal. That’s not the norm. Of the roughly 550 people currently on California’s death row, about 70% lack an attorney or the funding needed to pursue appeals or petitions. Even when a defendant manages to raise state constitutional claims, getting the California Supreme Court to weigh in can take more than a decade.
Part of the holdup stems from a shrinking, aging pool of attorneys qualified to handle capital appeals, compounded by chronic underfunding of the system. It can take years just to get appellate counsel appointed. Meanwhile, more than 130 fully briefed capital appeals are already sitting before the state Supreme Court, with dozens more working their way through earlier stages — a backlog that all but guarantees years of additional delay.
The financial toll has been staggering as well. Since 1978, California has spent roughly $6 billion maintaining its death penalty system, while carrying out only 13 executions. The most recent one took place on Jan. 17, 2006 — nearly two decades ago.
Given all of this, the constitutional questions raised in the pending civil rights petition demand timely answers, not another decade of delay. Every year the case remains unresolved, the evidence of racial disparity in California’s death penalty system continues to grow — and so does the human cost of waiting.
Original source: CalMatters
