Desert Sun, Volume 45, Number 169, 18 February 1972 — State Supreme Court Abolishes Death Penalty [ARTICLE]

State Supreme Court Abolishes Death Penalty

SAN FRANCISCO (UPI) Tile California Supreme Court today declared the death penalty unconstitutional, on the grounds that “it is cruel punishment.” The historic decision was on a 0-1 vote. An unofficial moratorium has been in effect on the death penalty all over Ihe United States for more than four years. The last U.S. execution occurred in Colorado June 2, 1967. The U. S. Supreme Court also has the matter under advisement and a decision is expected within two months. There are now 106 persons condemned to die in San Quentin Prison’s applegreen gas chamber. The last man to die there was Aaron Mitchell, killer of a policeman, who was executed in April, 1967. Mitchell’s execution was the first in the state in four years and touched off a wave of protest. San Quentin’s Death Row presently houses the assassin of Robert F. Kennedy, Sirhan B. Sirhan; cult leader Charles Manson; and John Linley Frazier, mass-murderer of a Santa Cruz mansion family. It was also famous for Caryl Chessman, who spent 12 years there before being finally executed in May of 1960 for conviction on two counts of kidnapping. There were 502 executions in California since 1893, 215 by hanging at San Quentin, 93 by hanging at Folsom and 194 by gas in San Quentin. Prior to that time executions were carried out by county sheriffs. Of those gassed, four were women. Nine states presently have no death penalty and another five have abolished it as a general penalty for first degree murder. Many other states retain the death penalty on their statute books but haven’t exercised it in decades. A bill to abolish the death penalty has failed several times in the California Legislature. Prof. Anthony G. Amsterdam of the Stanford University Law School led the arguments against capital punishment before both the California Supreme Court Jan. 6 and the U. S. Supreme Court Jan. 17, Amsterdam contended that the practice was “a mindless act of savagery.” “The death penalty is virtually unanimously repudiated and condemned by the conscience of contemporary society,” and used mainly against racial minorities and the poor, Amsterdam said.