As part of “The Faces of Wrongful Conviction”
conference to be held at UCLA this weekend, several exonerated
individuals who have collectively spent more than 356 years
combined in prison are scheduled to tell their stories Saturday in
front of an audience of students, political leaders, legal experts
and other advocates for abolishing capital punishment,
The conference, hosted by the UCLA School of Law, plans to
examine the causes and consequences of wrongful conviction and
discuss the application of the death penalty in California.
The California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice
will also hold one of its meetings during the conference.
The 22-person commission was created by the California Senate in
2004 to investigate problems in the criminal justice system and
make recommendations to the state Legislature by the end of
2007.
“We believe there is a need to streamline and narrow the
cases that are eligible for the death penalty,” said state
Sen. Gloria Romero, D-Los Angeles.
“That’s why we created the commission ““ to
come up with some recommendations to reform the application of the
law in California.”
Besides becoming the largest gathering of California’s
exonerated individuals, the conference also aims to bring together
a number of important figures in the movement for abolishing the
death penalty.
“This is a historic conference,” said David Elliot,
communications director for the National Coalition to Abolish the
Death Penalty, “because nowhere in the United States and not
in the modern history of the anti-death-penalty movement have so
many experts come together under one roof to discuss the innocence
issue.”
Key speakers at the event include Romero, Barry Scheck,
co-director of the Innocence Project, two eminent death-penalty
lawyers, Stephen Bright and Bryan Stevenson, and judge Kenneth
Starr.
“I think it is an opportunity for people working on these
issues in different arenas to gather together and make connections
and thereby perhaps embark on a strategic effort,” said Cathy
Mayorkas, executive director of public interest law and policy at
UCLA.
Mayorkas said that the diversity of the participants lends
itself to a large variety of goals, methods and perspectives
relating to the main issues of wrongful conviction and the death
penalty.
Topics to be discussed at the conference include the impact of
race and geography on the probability of wrongful conviction and
sentencing, as well as improved technologies ““ such as DNA
testing ““ used to determine innocence.
In the U.S., 123 people have been exonerated and released from
death row since 1973, according to the Death Penalty Information
Center Web site. The average time spent in prison by people
wrongfully sentenced to death is nine years.
“The problem is when it comes to the death penalty, there
is no instant replay; there’s not do-overs. You can’t
un-execute someone,” Elliot said.
Elliot said there is growing momentum for the movement
nationwide, citing New Jersey’s passage of a moratorium on
the death penalty.
With 649 inmates, California currently holds about 20 percent of
all death row inmates in the country.
“California has by far the largest death-row population in
the United States,” Elliot said. “And yet California
has a particular hesitation when it comes to the death penalty. The
state is really starting to think about the issue.”
Only 13 people have been executed in California since the death
penalty was reinstated in 1977.
“People are starting to realize that the criminal justice
system isn’t always getting it right,” Elliot said.
A moratorium is being considered by California legislators, but
Elliot said it is not expected to pass.