Opinion: End death penalty or charade of delays
By Marcos Breton, Sacramento Bee
Why even seek the death penalty when it hasn’t been implemented in California in nearly a decade and when Democrats who rule the state allow it to linger in perpetual limbo?
Jan Scully, the outgoing district attorney for Sacramento, answered the question without a hint of cynicism on Tuesday – quite a feat considering how cynical people on both sides of this issue have become.
Some death penalty supporters have come to believe that death penalty cases just waste taxpayer money because legal obstacles have prevented anyone from being put to death in California since Clarence Ray Allen was executed by lethal injection on Jan. 17, 2006.
Yet there was Scully, and her counterpart from Placer County, announcing they would seek the death penalty for Luis Enriquez Monroy Bracamontes, the Mexican national accused of killing two law enforcement officers in a terrifying late October crime spree that gripped the region.