The campaign seeking to abolish the state's death penalty is in some hot water after advocating to high school students in East Los Angeles without the school's permission.
The Garfield High School administration says it was never told that members of Yes on 62 would be on campus."Always will be a risk to execute an innocent one."
Last Friday, death row exoneree Juan Melendez and another speaker told students to convince their parents to vote yes on the measure. Kent Scheidegger is with the No on 62 campaign.
"Basically, a one-sided campaign event and it's not an appropriate thing to hold on a school campus."
The LA Unified School District says what happened was against policy. The Yes on 62 campaign has not responded for comment.
The "exoneree" is from Florida. Why do they need to import someone from Florida? With over 900 death sentences in California in the modern era (since 1977), surely a system as flawed as they say ours is would give them a solid California example of a former death row inmate affirmatively proved innocent, wouldn't it?
Nope, not a single one. They keep talking about cases from other states, cases that predate our present system, or cases that never were capital at all because they don't have a single relevant example. That says a lot.
When you can't win on the merits, you cheat. If you CAN win on the merits, you don't need to cheat.
Not that cheating is unexpected in any event, from those who take the side of killers.
The so-called "exoneree", Melendez, was convicted of a 1983 robbery & murder by a jury. The Florida Supreme Court rejected his arguments in three separate decisions. In 2002, a local felony-level trial judge decided Melendez was entitled to a new trial on essentially the same arguments previously rejected by the state Supreme Court. The State was unable to proceed with a new trial because the key witness against Melendez was dead.
Melendez now makes his living traveling and lecturing on his "exoneration". He is married to one of the directors of an anti-death-penalty advocacy group.
JCC