AG Becerra Joins Murderers to Preserve Execution Delay: In court papers filed on Friday, March 1,
California Attorney General Xavier Becerra has asked
the federal court of appeals to reject a motion by
the families of murder victims seeking to stay an
illegal injunction that prevents the California
Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR)
from making itself able to carry out executions of
the state's worst murderers. In January CJLF filed a petition in the Ninth
Circuit Court of Appeals asking
it to vacate 24 illegal stays granted since 2006 by a federal district judge in San Francisco. On February 19, CJLF moved
for a more limited order allowing the state to go
forward with the preparation needed to be ready to
carry out executions when the stays are lifted. In
orders without precedent anywhere in the country,
the district court has blocked CDCR from such
routine activities as training the execution team
and acquiring the needed drugs. "These orders are
blatant violations of the Prison Litigation Reform
Act," said CJLF's Legal Director Kent Scheidegger.
"The Attorney General knows it and has briefed the
law in the district court, yet he will not appeal
and opposes the victims' and district attorneys'
efforts to do something about it."
In the Attorney General's opposition, he argues
that family members of murder victims are mere
"bystanders" to the case and do not have enough of a
"particularized interest" to support legal standing.
"Both federal law and the California Constitution
recognize that victims of crime and the families of
deceased victims are much more than 'bystanders'
when it comes to the punishment of the
perpetrators," Scheidegger said. "The Attorney
General has abandoned his obligation to enforce the
law by allowing these illegal stays to remain in
place, and is now arguing to prevent the families of
murder victims from taking action on their own," he
added.
CJLF's petition is available here: http://www.cjlf.org/program/briefs/Alexander_Winchell_Petition.pdf
CJLF's motion for partial stay is available here:
http://www.cjlf.org/program/briefs/Alexander_Winchell_StayMotion.pdf
The Attorney General's response is available
here: http://www.cjlf.org/files/19-70232_StateOppStay.pdf
Since the AG of the state of California is pursuing neither:
(A) the desire of the Cali. Dept. of Correction; nor
(B) the desire of the family of the victim of the murder – as expressed by
them going to the extreme of producing a legal motion --
one might wonder whose interests AG Becerra is pursuing.
In the AG of the state of California’s “Opposition to Motion”,
the only motive he reveals is to ensure that the execution
“comport(s) with the Eighth Amendment's prohibition on
cruel and unusual punishment”.
Since not less than a Venezuelan marxist would believe this Maduro-like
fabrication, one might conclude that AG Becerra is a Machiavellian
supporter of the inviolable right of the murder to never face execution.
Would that AG Democrat Becerra would be at least as honest as Sen. Bernie Sanders and ‘jump the shark’, admitting that he holds the life of the murderer
as sacred as Sanders holds the cause of the Sandinista, and the Soviet.
I'm not so sure about (A).