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#1
02-13-2010, 05:33 PM
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Why has this death row inmate not been executed or had his sentence commuted (after 29 years)?
Lawrence Bittaker was sentenced to death twenty-nine years ago, in February 1981. He remains on death row.
I am not seeking to have a debate on capital punishment, nor am I hoping to debate the notion that keeping someone on death row for three decades is unconstitutional, cruel and unusual, etc. I am not pitting Bittaker and neither am I here to attack those who are opposed to capital punishment or who advocate for it. I simply want to know why, after almost thirty years, his sentence has not been carried out nor has it been commuted to 'life without'. Even with the obligate appeals, various court challenges, re-appeals, and so forth, I cannot understand why still more time is required to decide his fate. So, my 'bottom line' "factual question" is: what possible reasons can exist at this time to account for the continuing delay in settling Bittaker's fate once and for all? 
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#4
02-13-2010, 06:14 PM
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Quote:
Both men raped the girl, and then Bittaker wrapped a straightened wire coat hanger around her neck. He tightened the wire with vise-grip pliers, strangling her to death. They wrapped her body in a plastic shower curtain and dumped it in a nearby canyon. That's not murder? 
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#5
02-13-2010, 06:17 PM
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I don't see 'Because he's innocent!' as an answer. If he could prove that innocence to the courts, he'd be free or at least have his sentence commuted to something less than death. The courts must, therefore, think he's guilty. Given that they think he's guilty and that he has been sentenced to death, why has that sentence not been carried out?
Minor Hijack- I don't see Mummia Abu Jamahl being executed any time soon. The court has found him guilty, sentenced him to death, and gone through many rounds of appeals. But given that many folks still think Jamahl is innocent and that there would be a sizable political backlash against the governor and every other politician associated with actually carrying out the sentence, I expect the man to die of old age.
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#6
02-13-2010, 06:23 PM
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It looks like the California Supreme Court didn't affirm his direct appeal until 1989, and his state habeas corpus appeals were delayed until at least 1997 partially because the court had to figure out whether his "vexatious litigant" status applied to his habeas petition (he's a prison "writ writer," filing up to 40 frivolous lawsuits in a year). He didn't exhaust his state remedies until November 29, 2000, so he didn't even get started in the federal courts until then. I'm not sure if his federal habeas has been exausted, but it looks like California is also very, very slow in executions compared to other states, only 12 since 1992. Their Supreme Court had a huge backlog in the 80's and 90's:
"When Chief Justice Rose Elizabeth Bird and two other justices left the court after their defeat in 1986, there were 171 capital cases pending. Since then, under Chief Justice Malcolm M. Lucas, the court has issued a record 54 death-penalty decisions in little more than a year. Nonetheless, as death verdicts continue to come to the court on automatic appeal, there now are 182 capital cases awaiting decision--representing nearly one-half of the court's full docket of 389 cases."
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#7
02-13-2010, 06:24 PM
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It looks like the person who's been on death row longest is Gary Alvord, in Florida. Alvord was put on death row in 1974 for the murder of three women.
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#9
02-13-2010, 07:22 PM
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It's both. I'm pretty sure every state that has the death penalty has a special cellblock in the prison where the death penalty is carried out where the people condemned to death are housed.
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#10
02-13-2010, 07:32 PM
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#12
02-14-2010, 09:21 AM
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Clarence Ray Allen was executed in January of 2006. But you're right. California has only executed 13 people since the death penalty was reinstated.
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#13
02-14-2010, 10:44 AM
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My WAG:
California doesn't have a real "life without parole" sentence. They may call it that, but at some point, a person convicted of LWOP could be paroled. Similarly, being put on death row doesn't necessarily end in a death sentence. But it precludes them from even being considered for parole, effectively giving them LWOP. There might be an occasion that a person sentenced to death row could be paroled, but only after their death sentence is commuted to a LWOP, then to a parole. But by the time that all happens, the convict is so old it probably doesn't matter whether they're in or out of prison.
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#15
02-14-2010, 07:18 PM
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Gonzomax, please don't post completely erroneous information about a question you know nothing about in GQ, especially as the first response to the thread. You've been here long enough you should know better than this. Colibri General Questions Moderator
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#16
02-14-2010, 08:49 PM
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I assume that his habeas case at the federal level is still in progress. I don't know how long these things usually take but the appeal must of slowed it down even further.
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