capital punishment uh i guess out in California has has had a lot of uh a lot of you know discourse in the paper uh apparently uh there's they haven't uh executed anybody since nineteen sixty seven i believe
um yeah that's that's far back as i can remember well that's before my time actually
yeah they a well i we were we uh we just started we we lived in Redwood City when we were out there
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and uh and we found that uh you know it was a very liberal kind of community
but uh i i i really feel that the that the law enforcement community uh you know puts these people behind bars and then they they uh uh you know the lawyers these lawyer groups
get together and they uh they i think extend beyond the normal uh appeal process
uh you know and just drag these this guy uh his his uh ultimate uh demise out for ten or fifteen years
uh and i i think that uh that there there's something that has to be changed in the system to to do that i i think capital punishment uh uh laws are probably stringent enough but i think the appeal process is really getting in the way
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do do you feel as though there should be uh more uh laws or or more uh you might say transgressions that would be enforceable by uh by uh uh capital punishment
well i think that currently the the way the law stands isn't so much that the laws are enforceable or not it's more they're not enforcing the death penalty itself it's
it's to the point where they're saying like here you're you're going on death row but you'll stay there for twenty years and nothing's being done about it um the laws exist and too many times they're frequently upheld in in um
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in in Appeals Court just because of technicalities and because of maybe small little holes that their defending attorney can find and it's it's really getting out of hanters in most many states
well the term technicality the the the law enforcement community uh
uh you know has to has to separate the difference between somebody who is being set up in which uh griedous acts are done to uh to you know get somebody into a a situation where they're gonna be guilty of of a crime
or whether uh and and whether the rights of that individual are been have been you know impugned um but or whether there's just you know a policeman has just made a uh
uh you know a a non a non critical error error though be it not the right way to do it but but you know the the merits of the case in terms of you know the guy was a law breaker is being supported
now i i'm at at at this juncture i you know i'm i'm not sure you know what constitutes a a technicality you know that that's what all these these hearings are about and that's what all these you know court cases are about i mean
our uh our our glorious uh you know mayor here in Washington is six days away from getting out of uh out of uh the can and uh you know he he tried to appeal his conviction
uh and you know it didn't work but be that as it may everybody who got enough money will pump the appeal process dry
um in in the old days you know and say round about times of Battle of Hastings you know and that villages villages if you were a transgressor they
they either you know drove you out in the woods or you became a ward of somebody and he were you were his slave and if he didn't like what you did he killed you
and that has that's pretty effective
uh you know it's not good for civil rights i guess but it's pretty effective in that you know you've got to get along in the community and if you don't you will perish either by the hand of your your your master or by being pushed out in the woods
so i i i mean as as man has gotten more complicated so all of the uh machinations to uh you know protect him from
from being uh dumped on by uh civilian authority in in in some in criminal actions especially you know murder cases and that sort of thing
well it seems like well it it seems as if in the past um typically there have been a lot a lot of cases of people being wrongly tried or wrongly punished and the whole
the whole idea behind the current criminal process system
is to protect those who actually didn't commit the crimes all be it it seems that we are failing in that in that ultimate goal
because there are times when people who who are guilty are getting off
um for instance um there's a case a few years back where um someone um someone who's being
convicted for was under a trial was going to trial for murder was let off because of a technicality that the officer the arresting officer um did not read the defendant their rights
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and where as all the evidence was there the witnesses were there the everything everything was conclusively pointing to this individual yet
