Two days after California executed its oldest death row inmate, state lawmakers on Thursday blocked a bill that would bar the state from carrying out death sentences for two years.

The bill’s Democratic author blamed Republicans for stalling it in the state Assembly’s Appropriations Committee and said he would not abandon his proposed moratorium, which would also allow a committee to investigate whether California had sent innocent people to death row.

(Source: Washington Post, Jan. 19, 2006, “Calif. death penalty moratorium bill stalls,” via TalkLeft)

Cross-posted at The Southern California Law Blog

The LA Times reports:

A two-year moratorium on California’s death penalty passed its first test in the Legislature today with approval from a panel of Assembly members. The proposal would suspend executions while an independent commission studies whether the state’s criminal justice system allows the innocent to be convicted.

Even if the measure prevails in both houses, testimony against it from a representative of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger suggested that a veto could lie ahead.

Sue Blake of the state Office of Planning and Research said Schwarzenegger’s denial of clemency to condemned murderer Stanley Tookie Williams and two other men “indicates he has a strong faith in the death penalty.”

The bill was authored by Assemblyman Paul Koretz (D-West Hollywood.) In related news, New Jersey’s legislature has passed a moratorium that is now expected to be signed into law by the governor.

Cross-posted at The Southern California Law Blog

LA Voice has a disturbing report:

Welcome news in the legal world: Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley and Johnnie Cochran attorney Brian Dunn are pushing for reform of California’s merciless Three Strikes law. The two just filed the “Three Strikes Reform Act of 2006” with the attorney general’s office in a bid for inclusion on the November ballot, proposing to make only violent or “serious” felonies (and exceptions such as burglary) count as third strikes.

This is good news, since California has led the nation in Three Strikes convictions ever since law-and-order Californians decided 11 years ago to damn all back-sliding two-timers to 25-to-life for something as simple as shoplifting razor blades or swiping a slice of pizza …

When will the politicians learn that Californians support the Three-Strikes law as written, giving the judges and prosecutors the discretion regarding the use of non-violent third strikes. You can read the new initiative here.

Cross-posted at the Southern California Law Blog

The San Francisco Chronicle reports:

State Superintendent Jack O’Connell delivered a tough-love message Friday to nearly 50,000 high school seniors still hoping to escape a new requirement that they pass the state’s exit exam to get a diploma in June:

The answer is “no,” he said. There will be no way for this year’s students who fail the test to graduate with their classmates.

His message was a response to demands from critics of the exit exam that he find some alternative to this high-stakes test.

“I have concluded that there is no practical alternative available that would ensure that all students awarded a high school diploma have mastered the subject areas tested by the exam and needed to compete in today’s global economy,” O’Connell said.

The schools chief said his unyielding stance is in the students’ best interest.

“The exit exam is working,” O’Connell said. “Students are meeting high standards, and employers overwhelmingly support the exam.”

He cited an independent evaluation that found schools have improved curriculum as a direct result of the exit exam.

About 78 percent of the Class of 2006 — more than 350,000 students — have passed the test, and more are expected to before the school year ends, the evaluation said.

Although O’Connell offered no options for seniors still trying to pass the test in time for graduation this year, he said students will be allowed to continue to try to pass the test of basic English and math skills long after their classmates have walked the graduation stage.

He also plans to ask the Legislature to help those students by expanding adult education, summer school and tutoring programs as well as paying for a year of independent study after 12th grade.

“We will not turn our backs on you,” O’Connell said, directing his remarks to the 50,000 or so students in the class of 2006 who are expected to reach the end of the school year without having passed the test.

No sooner had O’Connell disclosed his no-retreat policy on the exit exam than the San Francisco law firm of Morrison & Foerster announced plans to sue the state, saying the state will be unfairly denying many students a diploma.

“We are going to file a lawsuit by the end of the month,” said Arturo Gonzalez, a partner in the firm. “The gloves are off.”

Cross-posted at The Southern California Law Blog

The Sacramento Bee reports:

Backers of the failed Proposition 77 redistricting measure will announce a new proposal today to change how California draws legislative, congressional and Board of Equalization boundaries.The new initiative would take responsibility for drawing boundaries out of the hands of the Legislature and give it to a citizens commission, beginning in 2011.

Proposition 77, by contrast, called for a three-judge panel to handle redistricting and for new lines to be drawn immediately.

Ted Costa, who launched Proposition 77, is part of the new coalition hoping to place the proposal before voters in November.

Cross-posted at The Southern California Law Blog

The LA Times reports:

State legislators in early January will consider what is likely to be a contentious proposal to postpone executions for as long as three years.

On Jan. 10, an Assembly committee plans to consider legislation that would place a moratorium on executions until a special commission finishes examining whether California’s criminal justice system allows innocent people to be convicted.

The bill, the first of its kind in Sacramento in more than a decade, faces substantial political and legal hurdles. Its hearing — scheduled long before convicted killer Stanley Tookie Williams’ execution Tuesday — comes as the state is poised to perform a record number of executions in the coming year.

Posted by SoCal Lawyer

UPDATE:
Michelle Malkin: The Tookie Files: Never-ending Circus

La Shawn Barber examines a Christian perspective

RELATED:
Conservatives Slay Civil Rights Leader
Capital Punishment: Tookie’s Gone,
Death Penalty Debate Rages On
Should Tookie Die? (Votes counted)

The Monterey Herald reports:

Operators of a University of California-Berkeley Web site that is designed to help teachers teach evolution are being sued by a California couple who say the site improperly strays into religion.

Defendants include two top biologists from the UC Museum of Paleontology, which runs the Understanding Evolution Web site (http://evolution.berkeley.edu), and an official from the National Science Foundation, who is named because the foundation provided more than $400,000 in public funding for the site.

The lawsuit is one of many skirmishes underway across the country over how evolution is taught in schools. Some anti-evolution efforts are being pressed by proponents of “intelligent design,” the idea that living organisms are so complex they must have been created by a higher intelligence.

But the Granite Bay, Calif., couple who brought the Web site suit, Jeanne Caldwell and her husband, Larry, who is representing her in the lawsuit, say they are not proponents of intelligent design. They object to the teaching of evolution as scientific fact.

“Yes, I’m a Christian,” said Jeanne Caldwell, “but I would not categorize myself as an ID proponent. I believe God created the world.”

The suit, which was filed last month, specifically objects to portions of the Understanding Evolution Web site that deal with the interplay of science and religion. For example, it challenges the site’s linking to doctrinal statements from a variety of religions to demonstrate that “most Christian and Jewish religious groups have no conflict with evolution.”

Cross-posted at The SoCal Law Blog

Student’s mom speaks out against teacher’s political activities, teacher is fired, student is expelled. Bizarre on all counts.

Read more about it at the expelled student’s blog, Stand Up and Speak out, here and here. The Sacramento Bee has other background details (before the expulsion) here:

The mother of a Loretto High School student obtained photographs that exposed a drama teacher as a former Planned Parenthood volunteer, a revelation that led to the teacher’s firing last week. It wasn’t the first time Wynette Sills raised her anti-abortion views on the all-female, private Catholic campus.

Sills, who leads anti-abortion rallies outside Sacramento-area Planned Parenthood offices three times a week, complained to school administrators last year about a classroom presentation on domestic violence, said Gail Erlandson, a theology teacher for 11 years at Loretto.

[Cross-posted at The Southern California Law Blog]

The LA Times reports:

In the first program of its kind in the country, high-risk sex offenders in Orange County are being tracked via satellite using electronic ankle bracelets to determine their proximity to crimes, officials said Friday.

While other parolees nationwide are also being tracked using global positioning systems, Orange County’s collaboration between the Sheriff’s Department and the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation is the first to automatically cross-reference parolees’ whereabouts with crime locations.

“It’s one of those great tools to potentially identify a suspect, but it also helps us eliminate those people who have not committed the crime,” said Sheriff Michael S. Carona.

Twenty-one high-risk sex offenders in Orange County began being tracked by GPS this week. Officials expect to increase the number to 40 within two weeks.

Cross-posted at The Southern California Law Blog

RELATED:
Here Comes Jessica’s Law
Gov. Schwarzenegger Signs Bill To Track
Parolees with GPS
Welcome To California: Pedophiles and Rapists
A “Protected Class”

The Daily News reports:

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and several state lawmakers kicked off a signature drive Thursday to place an initiative on next year’s ballot for what would be the nation’s most comprehensive sex-offender punishment and control reform.

“We will send a very clear message to all the sexual predators out here, the cowards who want to victimize innocent Californians, that we will stop you, we will catch you and we will punish you,” Schwarzenegger said.

The measure - called Jessica’s Law after a package of similar laws being pursued around the nation following a case in Florida - would require all paroled and newly registered sex offenders to wear a locator bracelet that would track their whereabouts at all times.

I can’t imagine anyone opposing this new law. Except maybe him, him and her.

Cross-posted at SoCal Law Blog