Santa Clara DA orders county's 15 death row inmates resentenced to life without parole
SAN JOSE – Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen announced on Friday that he has ordered the county's 15 inmates on California's death row to be resentenced to life without parole.
In a statement, Rosen said he is using a state law that allows district attorneys to resentence inmates if they determine the sentence "no longer serve justice."
Rosen said he has lost faith in capital punishment as a fair and effective crime deterrent. The DA had stopped seeking the death penalty in cases following the murder of George Floyd in 2020.
"The question is not whether these 15 human beings deserve the death penalty. It's whether the two million people of Santa Clara County deserve the indignity and ineffectiveness of the death penalty. It's an antiquated, racially biased, error-prone system that deters nothing and costs us millions of public dollars and our integrity as a community that cherishes justice," Rosen said.
The district attorney stressed the crimes committed by the death row inmates were horrible and that they will spend the rest of their lives in prison.
"Judges and juries of the People should decide where an inmate dies. God should decide when," Rosen went on to say.
Rosen said the move is being praised by death penalty opponents.
"Leadership often requires that we do things because it's the right thing to do even when it may not be popular," said Bryan Stevenson of the Equal Justice Initiative, which provides representation to prisoners who may be wrongly convicted. "I applaud the courage and the commitment to equality and justice that motivated this decision.
Bishop Oscar Cantu of the Catholic Diocese of San Jose said, "I also stand with and commend Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen for his prophetic and principled decision to reset the death penalty sentences in our county to life in prison. This decision is a significant step forward in respecting the sanctity of all human life, which is a core tenet of Catholic social teaching."
In 2019, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a moratorium on executions in the state of California, calling it "a failure." Earlier this week, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) announced a program that aims to relocate death row inmates to different prisons by this summer.
According to CDCR, there are 641 inmates currently on the state's death row. The last execution carried out by the state was in 2006.