It’s incomprehensible to me that Los Angeles District Attorney Nathan Hochman is once again pursuing the death penalty here in the county that has sent more people to California’s now-defunct death row than any other in the state. There is no thoughtful rationale for doing so.

California no longer has an execution protocol.

California no longer has a death row.

Even if a new governor were to reinstate the death penalty, the process itself means we are years away from seeing executions take place again, if ever.

So why would a responsible District Attorney waste the millions of dollars necessary to pursue death sentences in a state with a moratorium on capital punishment?

For whom is he doing this? Who is to gain from killing by the state?

Death Penalty Focus has thousands of supporters in California, many of whom are Los Angeles residents. In 2016, our proposition to repeal the death penalty in California failed by a slim margin statewide, but Los Angeles County voters approved it. So why would a responsible district attorney ignore the demonstrated will of the voters in the county he serves?

DA Hochman simply announced in March that he was instructing his office to pursue the death penalty once again, reversing his predecessor’s policy of banning prosecutors from seeking death, which had been saving county taxpayers millions.

At that time he stated that he remained “unwaveringly committed to the comprehensive and thorough evaluation of every special circumstance murder case prosecuted in Los Angeles County, in consultation with the murder victim’s survivors and with full input on the mitigating and aggravating factors of each case, to ensure that the punishment sought by the Office is just, fair, fitting, and appropriate.”

This vow to consult with victims’ survivors and seek input on mitigating and aggravating factors to “ensure that the punishment sought by the Office is just, fair, fitting, and appropriate” rings hollow only months after he made it.

DA Hochman has shown no interest in meeting with those whose opposition to the death penalty is well-known. He apparently has no interest in considering the beliefs of the Los Angeles County voters who supported our initiative, who see that capital punishment has never been and never will be “just, fair, fitting, and appropriate.” One wonders if he thinks about Larry Roberts, who was exonerated in July of last year after spending 41 years on California’s death row, becoming our state’s eighth death row exoneree.

It should concern him that, in 2021, the California Committee on Revision of the Penal Code released a report finding, “In Los Angeles County, 95% of those sentenced to death were people of color. Of the 223 people on death row who were convicted in Los Angeles County, 49% are Black, 28% are Latino, and 15% are white.”

One of our board members DA Hochman might learn from is Bethany Webb, whose sister was killed and her mother wounded in 2011, in the worst mass shooting in Orange County history. She steadfastly opposed the Orange County district attorney’s decision to pursue the death penalty in prosecuting the man who killed her sister and seven others, but her opposition and that of several of the other victims’ family members were ignored. The result was a six-year legal nightmare for the victims’ family members that ended with the presiding judge sentencing the defendant to life in prison because his right to a fair trial had been compromised by unethical conduct on the part of the DA’s and sheriff’s offices.

One would think Mr. Hochman might benefit from talking with her and other victims’ family members whose life experience has shown that the death penalty serves no one and actually causes more harm than it relieves. Instead, he has chosen to resurrect a broken, racist, hideously expensive, barbaric system that further brutalizes our society.

There’s even the question of whether his choice is a safe political bet. Support for the death penalty is steadily declining in the United States, and DA Hochman’s Los Angeles constituents made it clear they don’t support the death penalty when they voted for Prop. 62 in 2016.

Cui bono? Who profits from the return of state killing?