Pro-death penalty movement gaining traction

The emergence of Californians for Death Penalty Savings and Reform is the most visible sign of a growing nationwide response to the success of efforts to abolish the death penalty, reported the Marshall Project. For decades, executions were carried out steadily, and supporters, always a majority, were a silent one. But since 2007, seven states have repealed the death penalty and in many others the pace of executions has slowed as prison agencies struggle to find lethal injection drugs and prosecutors decline to pursue death sentences. A group of defense attorneys want to bring a constitutional challenge to the Supreme Court, and even Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush has voiced ambivalence.

Like many of these movements, the California initiative grew organically in response to efforts to abolish the death penalty. The victims’ advocates and prosecutors now leading the charge began working together in 2012 when opponents of the death penalty brought Proposition 34 — a straightforward abolition proposal — to voters. Those opponents included men and women with tough-on-crime credibility, from Jeanne Woodford, the former warden of San Quentin prison, to Ron Briggs and Don Heller, both political figures who championed an expansion of capital punishment in the 1970s.

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