California Supreme Court Wants Speedy Executions

The California Supreme Court on Monday called for a constitutional amendment to ease the backlog in the state's death penalty system, which takes an average of 17 years to execute a condemned convict -- twice the national average.

The amendment would permit the state's high court, which has had exclusive oversight of capital appeals since California became a state in 1850, to transfer review of some death penalty cases to lower courts. Chief Justice Ronald M. George, who announced the proposal, said he wanted the Legislature to put the amendment on the November 2008 ballot.

The system's delays and ensuing backlogs are bad for the condemned inmates, prosecutors and the public interest "in finality and enforcement of the law," George said in a phone interview Monday.

Currently, the state's seven Supreme Court justices spend about 20% to 25% of their time and resources on capital cases, he said. The "ever-increasing backlog . . . threatens to overwhelm the Supreme Court's docket," George said.

The proposal follows a small but significant chorus of voices calling for change in what they describe as a "dysfunctional" system that renders capital punishment as little more than an illusion.

The state has the nation's largest death row population, with 667 inmates -- 652 men at San Quentin and 15 women at the Central California Women's Facility in Chowchilla -- but only a few have exhausted their appeals, which can last decades.

California has executed 13 inmates since capital punishment was reinstated in 1978. In the meantime, more than 50 condemned prisoners have died of old age, suicide or prison violence.

The state would have to execute five prisoners a month for the next 11 years to clear inmates now on death row. And the backlog is likely to grow: Thirty people have been on death row more than 25 years, 119 for more than 20 years and 408 for more than a decade.