Mercury News: District attorney wants Santa Clara County convicts off death row
SAN JOSE — Building on a 2020 pledge to stop pursuing the death penalty, Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen is now seeking to remove all South Bay capital prisoners from California’s death row.
This week, Rosen’s office is petitioning the county Superior Court to resentence 14 men — all being held in San Quentin State Prison — to terms of life in prison without the possibility of parole.
The reasoning Rosen gave in court filings is grounded on the death penalty being an irreversible punishment that requires an equity of due process that can’t be guaranteed. There is also, he added, a “diminishing likelihood” of executions resuming in part because of a moratorium by Gov. Gavin Newsom, who has also initiated the shutdown of the state’s death row.
“The state is dismantling death row, and it is time we recognize this reality and dismantle these sentences as well,” Rosen states in one of the resentencing motions.