This is hopefully first of a series of posts in the runup to Gov. Schwarzenegger's private clemency hearing Dec. 8, 4 days ahead of the scheduled execution date Dec. 13. (My math is not wrong- executions in California usually occur at 12:01 am on the scheduled date, so really at the end of the day before, as soon as possible after the legal date begins)
More about the case at save Tookie web site.
This case is already very high profile with Jamie Foxx, Snoop Dog and many others going to bat for the popular author of anti-gang children's books, but no mistake, the hard line pro-death penalty faction will fight hard as well, and public opinion in California, when given specific facts about the death penalty will back away from it, but when asked the general question favours the death penalty, So the pro-death penalty side will avoid the details of how the penalty is administered, the bias against the poor and non-whites, the many exonerations, the rare tip of the iceberg cases where DNA is available, one estimate being 1 in 7 wrongfully convicted. See Barry Scheck's innocence project to get a flavour of how things go down.
The right conclusion from the exonerations is not that the system works, but that death penalty cases put so much pressure on the system that the path of least resistance often determines who is prosecuted and what the punishment is, and this is often not consistent with a thorough intelligent investigation and prosecution. I will try in the next 2 weeks to highlight a half dozen renowned cases in Canada where incredibly famous life sentence cases were shown only decades after the fact to be entirely bogus.
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