Harman aims to clean up death row

Last year, Costa Mesa-native and convicted killer Billy Joe Johnson told a jury that he wanted to be sentenced to death because he’d have more freedom on death row than with a life sentence. He said it’d be decades before he ever received a lethal injection.

State Sen. Tom Harman however, has proposed a package of legislation that could change that.

Through a series of bills, Harman, who is running for election as state attorney general, is looking to speed up the appeals process and change the way executions are carried out, which conceivably could lift a moratorium in effect since 2006.

“I think they could make a really big difference,” said Tiffany Conklin, Harman’s chief of staff.

Harman’s proposals attack three long-standing pillars of the death-penalty process.

First, it would divert direct appeals on capital cases headed straight to the state Supreme Court to the local Court of Appeal. Laws currently make all direct appeals go before the state Supreme Court. There are 698 inmates on death row in California, according to the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s Feb. 3 statistics.

In a news release, Harman calls the current process “judicial gridlock” that needs to be streamlined.

The senator also wants to lift what Conklin called the “arbitrary” cap on how many lawyers in the state can argue habeas corpus petitions for inmates. With nearly 700 inmates on death row, 34 attorneys are allowed to argue their habeas petitions. Some inmates have to wait up to 10 years to be represented by these attorneys, Conklin said. Harman is looking to lift that cap and let more attorneys be available for condemned inmates.

Finally, Harman and his supporters want to get rid of the three-drug “cocktail” that kills inmates. A federal judge ruled in 2006 that the inconsistency of the mixtures and poor training by the officers, among other things, equaled cruel and unusual punishment. Harman suggests a one-drug lethal dose of an anesthetic that has worked in Ohio prisons.

Since 1978, California has executed 14 inmates, with the last one in 2006. A moratorium is still in effect until death-penalty procedures are changed. Last year, John F. Kennedy and Skylar Deleon, two men who helped kill a Newport Beach couple at sea, were sentenced to death.

Johnson was sentenced to death for helping kill a man in Anaheim.