DECISION TIME--Thirty-one years ago, Kevin Cooper was sentenced to death by a California court for the brutal murder of four people in a ranch house in Chino Hills, a middle-class suburb of Los Angeles.

The bodies of Douglas and Peggy Ryen, their 10-year-old daughter Jessica, and a family friend, 11-year-old Chris Hughes, were all found stabbed to death. Josh Ryen, the couple’s eight-year-old son, managed to survive the attack.

From the start, Cooper’s case has been besieged with controversy: Cooper has steadfastly maintained his innocence; the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department destroyed and concealed important evidence; and the case was the first to make use of then-new DNA testing. One 9th Circuit Judge went so far as to write that Cooper “is either guilty as sin or he was framed by the police.” In a scene seemingly taken straight from The Making of a Murderer, there are allegations that the police planted physical evidence implicating Cooper and concealed statements from eyewitnesses who claimed to have seen three white men leaving the crime scene on the night of the murders. 

While no definitive evidence has been found to confirm Cooper’s guilt, he remains on death row. That’s because the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 constrains his ability to present new evidence. The AEDPA, passed during Bill Clinton’s administration, was one of a number of laws and regulations designed to prevent what were seen as an unending string of appeals afforded to those facing execution, particularly those who were claiming innocence as a result of newly discovered evidence.

But even judges involved in Cooper’s case have expressed doubt as to his guilt: One judge on the 9th Circuit called the ruling “wholly discomforting.” In 2009, the 9th Circuit denied en banc review of Cooper’s case, and the powerful dissent, joined by four other judges, begins: “The State of California may be about to execute an innocent man.”

Cooper is one of 747 people on California’s death row, and one of the 16 who have now exhausted all of his appeals. He faces execution if the backers of the (confusingly named) new pro-death penalty initiative, California Death Penalty Reform and Savings Act of 2016, have anything to do with it.

Amid declining support for the death penalty across the nation — 19 states have eliminated it entirely, and 2015 saw a record low in the number of death sentences and executions doled out — there’s been a joint endorsement by the California District Attorneys Association, law enforcement, and a majority of prosecutors across the state to enact the CDPRSA. They argue it will fix the death penalty.

That’s a potentially major shift in a state where more people on death row die from suicide than have been executed, and where more inmates have died of natural causes (60) than have been executed (13) since 1978. (Visiting San Quentin’s death row in 2015, the Los Angeles Times described a harrowing scene of wheelchairs lining the hallways.) Meanwhile, death row has cost California taxpayers $4 billion since it was reinstated in 1978. A Los Angeles Times story describes at least 20 death row inmates who are likely “permanently incompetent” — deemed to be unqualified for execution because of mental illness.

While the CDPRSA is being hailed by some as a panacea to prison bloat, there’s simply no research to support the notion that speeding up executions will save money—money that could be better used to solve cold cases or fund public defenders.

The death penalty in California has been headed toward extinction for a long time. Reinstated in 1978, death sentences, while technically legal, have been trapped in a morass of case law, further exacerbated by the unavailability of the execution drugs and the desperate attempts by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to write a new lethal injection protocol that survived the challenges of advocacy groups. As a result, no one has been executed in California since 2006.

With the exception of a few outlier counties, death sentences have gone down across the United States. Last year saw the lowest number of death sentences and executions in the last two decades. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, there were 49 death sentences issued in the U.S. in 2015, 14 of which were in California, more than any other state. (Texas, long a staple of the “death belt,” had only two.) These 14 death sentences were not evenly distributed throughout the state — Riverside County alone had eight.

There’s simply no research to support the notion that speeding up executions will save money.

Though California hasn’t executed anyone in a decade, certain counties in California continue to sentence people to execution at disproportionately high rates. As legal expert and senior researcher at the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice’s Rob Smith explains, these outlier counties account for almost all of the death sentences in the U.S. It so happens that five of these counties are in California — Los Angeles, Riverside, San Bernardino, Orange, and Kern.

Kern, Orange, and San Bernardino counties have produced more death sentences than the three most death-loving Texas counties, despite having fewer people. Riverside County, which is home to just 6 percent of California’s population, has produced over 50 percent of last year’s death sentences, more than Los Angeles County, which has over three times as many people. Most experts argue that these death sentences are the result of overzealous prosecutions, not increased crime.

So, is the CDPRSA a ploy to cement Southern California as the new death belt?

The immediate risk posed by the CDPRSA is that innocent people will be executed. Three men have been exonerated from California’s death row since its reinstatement. And while the district attorney of San Bernardino, Michael Ramos (who is sponsoring the initiative and is running to replace Kamala Harris as attorney general of California), told me that “California has never executed an innocent person,” those who know the Tommy Thompson case might disagree. Thompson, who was convicted in 1984 in Orange County largely on the basis of snitch testimony, went to the execution chamber with many people still asserting his innocence. And, despite evidence to the contrary, Ramos remains similarly convinced of Cooper’s guilt.

Supporters of the CDPRSA argue it will save money and help victims — namely, by double-celling death row inmates and saving on their health care and other housing expenditures. But there’s little evidence to support this argument. In fact, there’s reason to think the initiative will cost more money than is currently being spent on death row, because it moves death cases to the front of the docket, pushing out other cases and jamming courts.

Further, the $4 billion that has been spent on death row has come at the cost of other public-safety provisions, particularly in the counties that seem to favor executions the most. In 2010, the California Supreme Court held that at least 18 cases in Riverside against people accused of felonies and serious misdemeanors were dismissed because of the “fault or neglect” of the county government; the new death penalty initiative would seem to further strain a system that has already proven insufficient.

There is also little to no reason to think that victims’ families benefit from a death sentence. Take the case of Scott Dekraai in Orange County — if the prosecutors there gave up the death penalty, the case would be over because no one questions Dekraai’s guilt. Instead, the Orange County district attorney’s pursuit of a death sentence, in light of substantial police and prosecutorial misconduct, just means the case will be stalled for decades. “Stop the madness. Take the death penalty off the table and end all the appeals, all the court appearances,” a victim’s sister said in the local press.

Rather than creating justice, speeding up the death penalty increases the risk of a dreadful mistake, all to satisfy a handful of prosecutors who should be focused on following the law, not making it. Courts will be blocked up and costs will increase. And while the Supreme Court decided not to take up the issue of whether the death penalty itself violates the 8th Amendment, Justice Stephen Breyer has given hints that he is watching the issue closely.

California’s showdown on whether the death penalty should be resuscitated will indeed be an interesting battleground to watch.

(Jessica Pishko writes for excellent Pacific Standard Magazine  … where this piece originated.)

-cw

THE CITY-The illustrious attorney Mickey Kantor of the mega law firm Mayer Brown formed a fancy-smancy committee of poobahs back in 2013 to figure out what was wrong with the City of Los Angeles. Contrary to the proclamations of our new mayor that he had revitalized everything, this gaggle of self-appointed VIPs discovered that the City was going to rack and ruin. It wrote: 

“Los Angeles is barely treading water while the rest of the world is moving forward. We risk falling further behind in adapting to the realities of the 21st century and becoming a City in decline.” 

When time rolled around to fix the problem, the 2020 Commission became the Zero Zero Commission. It had nothing. 

Now, we read about all sorts of solutions in the LA Times, LA Weekly and CityWatch. Borrow $1.2 billion to build homes for the people we just made homeless by tearing down their homes. Or, better yet, how about a $120 billion tax increase for more subways, when, with each billion dollars we spend on transit, a smaller percent of the public actually uses mass transit? 

The cause of the City’s ruin can be viewed three times a week on TV. All we have to do is tune to the City Council’s live feed or to Channel 35 and we can watch criminality in action. Mickey Kantor is right: the City of Los Angeles is in decline, but there was no reason for him to keep the origin of our municipal woes a secret. His commission just lacked the guts to admit the truth. The Los Angeles City Council operates under an unlawful vote trading pact which Penal Code 86 criminalized a decade ago in 2006. 

The vote trading pact is the old “I’ll scratch your back, if you scratch my back” trade-off. No councilmember will vote “No” on any project in another councilmember’s district. In return, no councilmember will vote “No” on any project in his or her district. As a result, any project which a councilmember places on the City Council agenda unanimously passes. They’ve got a 99.9% unanimous passage rate. 

This is not passage by a mere majority vote – this unlawful “voting pact” requires that every single councilmember who is present must vote “Yes” every single time. It does not matter how many laws a project may break -- it gets unanimous approval. It does not matter how many millions of dollars in gifts the developer gets -- there is unanimous approval. It does not matter if the city treasury cannot pay for roads or sidewalks because the developers are draining the coffers. Each project gets unanimous approval. The overriding concern of the City Council is that each and every council member has every one of these special deals with his special friends unanimously approved. 

Of course, almost nothing works in the city, and naturally we have too little money for pension funds, streets or paramedics. Yet, the councilmembers always get unanimous approval for whatever gifts they want for their special friends – no questions asked. Literally, no councilmember ever asks another council member if giving millions of dollars to CIM Group for 5929 Sunset is a wise idea. 

The City’s rotten core, its criminal vote trading system, continues on many fronts: 

•  If a councilmember’s buddy wants to construct twin skyscrapers straddling an earthquake fault line, he’s got it – unanimously. 

•  If a councilmember’s buddy wants $14 or $20 million for his Hollywood high rise which the courts closed down for being illegally constructed, he’s got it – unanimously. 

• If Councilmember Krekorioan’s buddy wants to tear down Marilyn Monroe’s historic home in Valley Village three days before the Cultural Heritage Commission meets, he’s got it – unanimously. 

• If Councilmember Mitch O’Farrell wants to continue evicting the elderly, disabled and the poor from their rent-controlled apartments so his buddies can continue to create more high-end, luxury boutiques for the rich and famous, he’s got it – unanimously. 

• If Councilmember Wesson wants all the sales tax revenue at the CIM Midtown Project to go to CIM Group and not to the City, he’s got – unanimously. 

• If a councilmember wants the millions of dollars of hotel taxes from its Grand Hotel to go to his buddy, aka Korean Airlines, he’s got it – unanimously. 

It does not matter what project a councilmember wants or how much the project will drain the city treasury, the councilmember gets it – unanimously. 

Let’s go back to Mickey Kantor and his report from 2013. It continued: 

“As a consequence, Los Angeles is sinking into a future in which it no longer can provide the public services to which our people’s taxes entitle them and where the promises made to public employees about a decent and secure retirement simply cannot be kept. City revenues are in long-term stagnation and expenses are climbing.” 

What is the City’s response when someone complains about the criminal vote trading agreement? The City claims that it is above the law. The City says that it is none of the courts’ business how the City conducts its internal affairs. It claims that it does not have to follow Penal Code § 86 because the Mental Processes of the councilmembers are confidential and privileged. 

The City’s claim is far more than councilmembers’ asserting the Fifth Amendment. It claims that no one may present any evidence in court from which a jury could infer that a councilmember had a criminal state of mind. King Louis XIV of France made the same assertion when he claimed, “L'etat c'est moi'” (I am the state). 

In line with its grandiose belief, the City claims that the State of California has no power to enforce its laws setting the limits on how cities may govern themselves. The State can pass all the laws it wants, but the City denies that the courts have the right to adjudicate whether the City is following the law. 

The City claims that it is solely a matter of politics, and courts may not hear cases that involve politics. The fancy word for this weird idea is “justiciable.” The City asserts that the question of whether or not city councilmembers engage in criminal vote trading is a non-justiciable issue. It is not the court's role “to dictate the manner in which councilmembers choose to vote.” The City asserts that the courts are impotent in the face of this massive, decade’s long criminal vote trading agreement that has brought disaster upon the City.

So now, you know why the 2020 Commission turned tail and ran away. The City insists that the only law it has to follow is the law it wants to follow. In fact, the City claims that it does not even have to follow its own rules and procedures. Why? Because the courts may not second guess what the city actually does. 

So we Angelenos can forget about exalted commissions. We can forget about the Neighborhood Councils or submitting our comments to challenge construction projects. We can forget about the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative. We can forget about everything because the fix is in. 

The role given to us Angelenos is simple – approve hundreds of billions of dollars of bonds, rate hikes, and tax increases so that each city councilmember has an endless supply of money to dole out to his friends.

(Richard Lee Abrams is a Los Angeles attorney. He can be reached at: [email protected]. Abrams views are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of CityWatch.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

EASTSIDER-When I grew up, we had a whole bunch of automakers in the US, mostly based in Detroit. One heck of a lot of jobs, mostly in America. That ended with the full-on onslaught of the Global Economy, which we are told is “good for us” and somehow produces a better free market which should make us all sing hosannas and clap with joy. 

I still remember the television pronouncement of President Bill Clinton as he told us all to get over the idea of working for one employer and retiring on their pension. We lived in the new, competitive, global economy and we needed to get used to it and be willing to train, and retrain, for a bunch of different jobs during our working life so that we too, could become competitive. Or some such horsepuckey. 

So here’s my poster child for “how’s that workin’ for ya?” Let’s talk about airbags. You know, the ones that are in virtually every car these days, made overseas by the Takata Corporation, a veritable shining example of global competitiveness and its outcomes. 

These devices were so cost competitive on a per unit basis that they created close to a monopoly: no one else could compete with their prices. After all, if car companies can save a few cents per unit on every car they make, then they should do so. Then add all that up and “hurrah” – it’s a shining example of global competitiveness in action. 

But it is also a prime example of what happens when a system goes wrong. The simple timeline of the airbag problem and efforts to fix it shows us how incapable our system is in actually dealing with global problems of this magnitude. Here’s Consumer Reports’ take on it. 

And this gift just keeps on giving. I own a Toyota and was overjoyed to be greeted by this headline last week: “A second airbag supplier SNAFU hits Toyota, 1.4 million cars recalled.” 

Seems to me that all this points out some pretty serious flaws in the wonderful “global economy” theory. When things go wrong, no one knows the magnitude of the problem for a long time because the chain of how it has occurred is murky, complex, and has happened over a long period of time. The company on the hook is simply unable to fix the problem for every vehicle, because, in truth, doing that all at once would make them go bankrupt. So too bad for all of us and our cars. But we still go through these tortured exercises about how the government is somehow responsible for figuring out what to do. It’s a huge mess and coping with it is beyond the ability of any one of these global giants. Plus, the car manufacturers can’t take the hit all at once either. 

Remember, one of the upsides of the old “inefficient” economy was a certain amount of redundancy. There were usually a fair number of parts manufactured so that, if one messed up, there were quick fixes or alternatives. In fact, often a manufacturer would step up and actually make the part if necessary. Our global system, in contrast, tends to rely on a “just in time” assembly process with pieces coming on a slow boat from China. The old system had the advantage of redundancy, as well as being close to home -- and oh, by the way, providing jobs for us. 

The financial services industry could care less about this because they are the primary beneficiary of the global economy. They’ve already taken in their money and have it lodged in institutions all around the world, able to move their profits at the click of a button at the speed of electrons. 

By financing these deals with a massive amount of highly leveraged debt, they have made tons of money which they and their corporate partners can hide overseas to evade US taxes. If one of the deals goes bad, some investors (like your and my 401-k plans) get hit. However, the corporate types along with their profits have moved on, bearing no responsibility. 

In the meantime, people die. Also, a heck of a lot of folks in the United States have lost their jobs, with most of the manufacturing losses permanent. There is a direct correlation between the so-called free trade deals and job losses for us, and it’s not based on news media hype. Even the New York Times gets it. 

If you want to really know the details, check out the 55-page research paper referred to in the Times article here.  

Where does all this leave you and me? How about we consider less globalization and more local jobs? How about actually reigning in “Too Big to Fail” banks? Of course, I wouldn’t hold my breath with the two presidential candidates we have, but I can dream, can’t I?

(Tony Butka is an Eastside community activist, who has served on a neighborhood council, has a background in government and is a contributor to CityWatch.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

GELFAND’S WORLD--The Lotus Festival (photo above) is an annual celebration of the Asian cultures that have settled and flourished in Los Angeles. There will be dragon boat races and food, dance performances, a health fair, and community interest booths. The Lotus Festival is being held this weekend, July 9-10 at Echo Park. 

The festivities begin at noon each day and continue until 9 PM. There will be 14 food booths, 29 boutique booths (that's how the sponsor describes them), and 38 community organization booths. Entertainment begins at noon each day, and continues until the festival's closing time of 9 PM. 

How, you may ask, do you manage to fit dragon boat races into the middle of Los Angeles? The answer is Echo Park Lake. This is also a clue for the answer to "Why is it the Lotus Festival?" 

Back in the late 1800s, what is now Echo Park was empty land on the western edge of a much smaller but growing city of Los Angeles. Then came the lake. It was originally designed to be a reservoir, containing water diverted from the L.A. River. You can read the story in Nathan Masters' history.  As Masters explains, the lake and its surroundings went through various phases, and were eventually made into what we now know as Echo Park. 

Historians are unsure how the lotus plants began to populate the lake, but at some time in the 1920s, they began to flourish. There is an amusing story of how the lake's lotus population died off and was later reintroduced. The fun part is that the replacement plants came from cuttings that had been stolen from the lake nearly a decade earlier. You can read about it in Marisa Gerber's story in the L.A. Times. How many people can put lotus thief and honored conservationist on their resume? Randy McDonald can. 

The Lotus Festival is well on its way to the half-century mark, although it went out of business for a short time and then came back in 2014. 

Each year, a different country sponsors the Lotus Festival. This year, it is the Republic of Korea. To give you an idea of the breadth of what will be presented, artist Yongseob Kwon will be displaying his remarkable collection of paintings of the LA River as imagined in a future setting. And those of you who have been active in neighborhood councils may know members of the Korean Culture Center Inc, which supports the heritage of the Korean independence movement as it existed in Los Angeles a century ago. 

Wear your sun screen and print out a street map.

●●

Dave Thomas would have been ashamed--Dave Thomas (photo right) was the guy you may remember from Wendy's commercials. He has since passed on, but he represented his company on television for more than a decade, mostly in the 1990s. The other night I went into the Wendys over in Carson and ordered a burger and a bowl of chili. The young man at the register asked me if I'd like onions and cheese on my chili. 

You may already know where this is going. I said, "Sure." He took my money but when I reached for the receipt, he held onto it, telling me that it was used to fill my order. Only later did I notice that Wendy's had stuck a half-dollar charge for the cheese on my bill. I should point out that the cheese they put on wouldn't have filled a thimble, but that's not the point. The point is that the company dishonestly and dishonorably stuck a surcharge on my bill without warning or explanation. Considering that cheese and onions are an expected part of a bowl of chili unless the customer declines them, this wasn't right. It was as if they had stuck a surcharge on the bill for taking a packet of sugar to go with a cup of coffee. 

If you were to have gone into that same restaurant with me that same night and looked at the menu, you would have seen the incriminating evidence. The menu board gave the prices for two sizes of chili, but nowhere did that menu say anything about charging extra for cheese. Like I said, Dave Thomas would have been ashamed of this kind of behavior. The young manager politely explained that the computer automatically adds the fifty cents to your bill if you agree to the offer of the added cheese. 

There oughta be a law--There is upselling and then there is sleazy upselling. One morning I ordered some breakfast at the McDonalds here in San Pedro. The menu item explained that my breakfast came with a drink which could be orange juice or coffee, and when I asked for coffee, the sales lady said, "Medium?" I assumed that she was offering me a chance to have either the smaller coffee (medium) or the larger coffee, as in upsize that. If she had offered me a large coffee, I would have understood that there would be a surcharge. 

So that morning in McDonalds, still looking at the printed price list and in answer to the question, I said, "Sure." That was another half-buck that a corporate computer stuck onto my bill in its own sneaky way. I guess I should be more careful about answering any question at a fast food place with "Sure." 

The game in upselling seems to be that the advertised price isn't necessarily the real price, and if you agree to any change whatsoever, you deserve your fate. But how is the offer of that half-thimble worth of cheese -- which the customer would assume is something that comes with the order -- any different than the question of whether you want cream in your coffee? We've come to expect that we can have our coffee with cream or without cream for the same price. Restaurants don't ordinarily charge us for sugar or artificial sweetener. It's part of the deal, and the cheese should be too. Or the sales person should make it clear that it's an upsale and it will be costing you. Then you can say to yourself, "Wendy's doesn't provide the whole dish when I order chili, so maybe I should avoid the Wendy's experience." 

Long ago, fast food places introduced the hard upsell by asking, "Will you be having fries with that?" It didn't take people long to figure out that fries weren't a free bonus, but cost extra. Eventually that question became the punch line to a lot of jokes, such as "What is the first thing a liberal arts major says in his new job?"

(Bob Gelfand writes on science, culture, and politics for City Watch. He can be reached at [email protected]) 

-cw

A PASTORAL PERSPECTIVE--As a pastor it is my calling to defend the helpless and to point out injustice when it happens. Christianity is not always a "namby pamby" religion. There is a time for condemnation and to demand change. I am reminded of Jesus Christ taking a whip to the money changers and overturning their tables in the temple in Jerusalem. What brings all of this to my attention are the two recent shootings of black men in this country. 

It is an uncomfortable fact in this country that when it comes to cops and African American men, it is open season on murdering black men. Having dated a black man for 2 years, I can personally testify to the terrible relations between the black community in Pasadena and the police. I even took a 13-week community policing class in Pasadena, and what I came away with was disheartening. The attitude of the PPD is shoot first, ask questions later. When I pressed the officers about that, the response was that was what lawyers and the courts were for, to work out the details. Our officers in the PPD are trained in Orange County, hardly a bastion of progressive thinking. This is made even worse by the recent shootings by Pasadena police of unarmed black men in Pasadena. 

This brings me to the shootings of Alton Sterling in Louisiana and Philando Castile in Minnesota that happened this week. Both men were shot point blank. Take a look at these videos, and then tell me if you think the shootings were necessary or justified. Warning: these videos are very graphic in nature.

Sterling

Castile

Enough is enough! Police officers need to be held accountable for their actions, both by their commanding officers and by grand juries that investigate. 

Police officers are not above the law. In the case of the officer in Minnesota, he was yelling obscenities at the victim when he shot him. 

In the case of Alton Sterling in Louisiana, two police officers were kneeling on top of the victim with the full force of their weight, and then shot him. 

We need a policing culture that respects the lives of everyone, regardless of the color of one's skin. We need to retrain our police forces on how to deescalate dangerous situations and how to interact with minority communities. And we need to make it crystal clear that the attitude of shoot first ask questions later has no place in policing, and if an officer does that, charges should follow. 

Gun and ammunition laws need to be changed, and changed now. Assault weapons have no place in our communities.  

Let me ask you this question: How many pastors have you heard speak out about all of this? And white pastors need to stop the silent act and speak out firmly against the killing of unarmed black men. My message to white pastors: Stop hiding in your churches and step up to the plate! 

We are entering a very dangerous summer season. The United States is a powder keg, just waiting to explode. We already have demonstrations planned for the two national political conventions. And now we have protests over the shootings in Louisiana and Minnesota. It's going to be a long hot summer. 

We read in Psalm 18 : "This God - his way is perfect; the promise of the Lord proves true; he is a shield for all who take refuge in him." My prayer is that the violence will end, and all of us, as children of a loving God, will take refuge in the loving arms of Christ. 

However, in the meantime, we demand change. We demand that the killing of unarmed black men stop. We demand that our police officers be retrained. Yes, black lives DO matter. ALL lives matter. And it is time we remember that. 

-cw

VIDEO INTERVIEW--Ken Bernstein (photo above), Principal City Planner and Manager of the Office of Historic Resources, [[http://preservation.lacity.org/ ]]   was recently interviewed for the Miracle Mile Residential Association’s “MMRA Channel on YouTube.”