Debra Saunders has this article in the SF Chronicle on Kermit Alexander.

Former San Francisco 49ers star Kermit Alexander is death penalty opponents' worst nightmare. Foes of the death penalty argue that the criminal justice system is skewed against African Americans and that prosecutors are less likely to seek the death penalty when victims are black. Alexander is an African American who grew up in the projects of Los Angeles. So were the four members of his family slain in a 1984 contract killing gone wrong. He has watched the three black men convicted for the murders try to escape responsibility for their crimes. In prison Darren Williams -- the Rolling 60s Crips gang member in charge of the contract hit to kill a disabled woman who lived two doors down the street -- has his own website, Free Darren Williams, with a link, "Black Lives Matter."

"Black lives matter," Alexander, 74, repeated as I spoke with him and his wife, Tami, recently, "What about my family? They didn't matter."

*                                                   *                                              *

November 2014: The Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, Kermit Alexander and Bradley Winchell -- the brother of Morales' murder victim Terri Winchell, 17, below -- sue the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation for delaying executions by not issuing a one-drug lethal-injection.

November 2015: The Department of Corrections officials propose a new one-drug lethal-injection protocol.

Will California ever enforce its death penalty?

California's death penalty has been on hold since 2006, when a federal judge ruled against the state's three-drug protocol. For nearly a decade, Sacramento dragged its feet rather than update the protocol. In the name of victims' families, the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation sued to make the state act. This month, corrections officials complied by proposing a one-drug lethal-injection protocol.