Justice or politics? Here's why California prosecutors seek death penalty despite moratorium

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — The Sacramento County District Attorney’s Office was just one of three to secure capital punishment in 2023, among California’s 58 counties. And prosecutors’ pursuit of the death penalty has slowed but hasn’t stopped, despite a statewide moratorium.

Twelve jurors will decide defendant Adel Sambrano Ramos’ fate as prosecutors and defense attorneys present legal arguments during the ongoing penalty phase of the trial in Sacramento Superior Court. Ramos, 51, pleaded guilty Aug. 30 to killing Sacramento Police Department rookie Officer Tara O’Sullivan, 26, during a North Sacramento standoff while she responded to a domestic violence call in 2019.

Prosecutor Jeff Hightower said jurors will vote for death after seeing evidence in the case, while defense attorneys implored them to consider Ramos’ abuse and trauma earlier in his life.

But a person has not been executed in California in nearly two decades after legal arguments arose over lethal injections, the state’s execution method. Gov. Gavin Newsom halted executions by instituting a moratorium in March 2019. Prosecutions resulting in the death penalty have declined since then — five or fewer each year since 2019, compared to a yearly average of just over 15 from 2003 through 2018.

The Sacramento County District Attorney’s Office said in a statement prosecutors continue to pursue death in cases like that of Ramos despite the moratorium because it’s the will of California voters, who’ve consistently approved referendums upholding capital punishment. But they will do so selectively.

“As evidenced by the rarity with which we seek the death penalty for murders committed in Sacramento County, we will continue to pursue this ultimate outcome for those who commit the most heinous and egregious murder,” according to a statement from the Sacramento County District Attorney’s Office.

Sacramento County voters have, throughout the years, leaned toward keeping executions by rejecting referendums to abolish capital punishment in line with the statewide vote.

The charging decision in the Ramos case came under the tenure of former Sacramento County District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert. The case is being tried under current District Attorney Thien Ho, whose office has continued to seek the death penalty.

Schubert did not respond to a request for comment. The District Attorney’s Office declined to comment specifically on pending prosecutions.

What goes into sentencing?

Jurors could consider a variety of factors at the penalty phase of trial, which is separate from the earlier portion of trial weighing a conviction. They’ll assess the victim’s status as a peace officer or whether the murder was “especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel,” according to the California statute outlining capital punishment.

Prosecutors undertake a nuanced and deep analysis when ultimately deciding to move forward with the death sentence, said Jonathan Raven, the assistant CEO of the California District Attorneys Association. A combination of families’ requests, the law and the strength of evidence all weigh into this critical decision, Raven said.

Opponents of capital punishment point to a lengthy appeals process that can circumvent offering the victim’s family members, seeking an execution, a chance to heal. They reference how a disproportionate number of inmates on death row are people of color, that some could be innocent and that pursuing the death penalty does not deter crime.

“As we’ve seen recently across the country, even in cases with overwhelming evidence of innocence, some prosecutors are truly bloodthirsty in their pursuit of death, and it’s hard not to imagine that political ambition is playing a role in that,” said Cristine Soto DeBerry, the executive director of the progressive group Prosecutors Alliance of California. “But taking a life should never be a political football.”

In Ramos’ case, defense attorney Jan Karowsky requested jurors weigh the negative experiences Ramos suffered as a child. Karowsky and his co-counsel Pete Kmeto tried unsuccessfully to prove their client suffered an intellectual disability and was incompetent before the penalty phase of the trial began.

Ramos’ family members previously testified the defendant’s father died a gruesome death in front of Ramos. He only finished ninth grade before traveling by himself to America, Hightower said.

O’Sullivan and her partner, Officer Daniel Chipp, canvassed Ramos’ home when he began firing haphazardly. He led officers on an approximate eight-hour standoff by creating sophisticated system in which live surveillance footage of his home looped back to him, Hightower previously said. Ramos also yelled vulgarities, epithets and taunts at O’Sullivan as he shot at her, according to Hightower.

California’s history of executions

Capital punishment and its legality in California have changed over time.

Executions in the state’s early history were only allowed in county jails or “some convenient private place” in the county under the Criminal Practices Act of 1851, according to a California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation document.

But the Legislature barred local executions, and moved killings to the state level in 1891. The first ever executions by the state happened March 3, 1893, at San Quentin State Prison and Dec. 13, 1895, at Folsom State Prison.

A series of state and federal court decisions halted executions in California for 25 years starting from 1967. The California Supreme Court ruled in 1972 that the death penalty was unconstitutional because it amounted to cruel and unusual punishment. The ruling led 107 inmates on death row to be resentenced to life without the possibility of parole.

Former Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed a bill in 1977 proposing to revive the death penalty, a highly controversial move that outraged voters who had approved a proposition seeking executions in 1972, according to The Sacramento Bee’s previous reporting. The state Senate and Assembly overrode Brown’s veto, only the third time since 1946 the Legislature had reversed a governor’s signature.

Voters then approved Proposition 7, the current statute of the death penalty, in 1978. The first execution under that statute did not come until 1992.

Voters then also upheld executions by voting against Proposition 34 in 2012 (with about 52% voting no) and Proposition 2016 (53%), each which would have repealed the death penalty if passed. Decades ago, constituents overwhelmingly voted to establish capital punishment, with 72% voting in favor of Prop. 7 in 1978, according to the Los Angeles Times.

California’s most recent execution came in 2006.

Newsom then on March 13, 2019, ordered a moratorium on death penalties, despite Californians’ approval of the punishment. He argued that the system has discriminated against mentally ill defendants, people of color and has not made the state safer.

Sacramento County cases

The sole capital punishment case tried last year locally was a man who murdered his family inside their South Land Park home in 2017.

Salvador Vasquez-Olivia, now 63, bludgeoned to death his wife Angelique Vasquez, 45, and their two children, daughter Mia Vasquez, 14, and son Alvin Vasquez, 11. He fatally stabbed his niece at a home on 35th Avenue in March 2017. Last November, he was sentenced to death.

The Sacramento County District Attorney’s Office this year is also seeking the death penalty for a man found guilty of murdering Sacramento County Deputy Mark Stasyuk in 2018.

A mistrial was declared after jurors hung in the penalty phase of the trial for Anton Lemon Paris, and attorneys are scheduled to be back for further proceedings in the case Nov. 15, according to online court records.

Schubert also chose to pursue the death penalty in both these cases.

Why pursue the death penalty?

District attorneys derived their power from these referendums and must consider the law when making a decision for sentencing, Raven said. But each elected figure also acts independently.

“Many district attorneys would have no problem if the voters decided to abolish the death penalty in the future,” he said.

The historically low number of executions sought may be explained by how the burden of proof for prosecutors is very high when trying a capital case.

A jury instruction asks jurors to only elect a death sentence during the penalty phase when the evidence is proven beyond a “lingering doubt.” That is a higher burden of proof than “reasonable doubt,” used at the conviction phase of trial to convict a defendant, Raven said.

Newsom’s executive order and legal appeals challenging the ultimate punishment doesn’t act as the final deterrent, said Elisabeth Semel, the founding director of UC Berkeley’s Death Penalty Clinic defending inmates on death row.

The executive order could be withdrawn and executions could resume, though there is still litigation pending over the legality of the method of execution.

“It’s important to understand that the governor’s power is very limited in this regard,” Semel said.

Prosecutors are more likely to pursue the death penalty when it involves the death of a peace officer, Semel said. District attorneys rely on police officers to build their cases for trial, which can lead relationships and expectations by police that their own officers must be vindicated, she said.

The family’s desired outcomes can play a role for prosecutors as well as evidence.

Raven, who has not personally tried any capital punishment cases, said he has worked and supported victim family members where the killer was eligible for the death penalty. Before his work with the California District Attorney’s Association, Raven served for more than a decade as the chief deputy of the Yolo County District Attorney’s Office.

He recalled the grieving mothers of two boys shot or bludgeoned to death near Knights Landing, their son’s bodies never found. The District Attorney’s Office explained to the family why they were seeking a sentence of life without the possibility of parole, which helped them understand and have peace.

“In other cases I’ve seen a jury’s sentence of death play a part in helping them in their journey to self-healing where closure is completely elusive,” Raven said.

In 2023, the deaths of a UC Davis student and a well-known Davis man rattled the city as the killer remained on the loose. A homeless woman was also stabbed in her tent, and survived, before police arrested a former UC Davis student Carlos Reales Dominguez in connection to the three stabbings.

The Yolo County District Attorney’s Office said in February they choose to forgo a sentence of death, a decision that was made following what Deputy District Attorney Matthew De Moura called a “thorough investigation.” Reales Dominguez has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.

But other prosecutors may tend to focus on politics. There have been counties in which DAs sought the death penalty even when a victim’s family opposes it, or have not sought death even when a victim’s family asks for it, said Chesa Boudin, the former district attorney of San Francisco County and now the executive director of the Criminal Law & Justice Center at UC Berkeley.

And the lengthy appeals process deprives everyone, including victims, of a sense of closure, Boudin said. He served as the District Attorney from 2020 until his historic recall by voters in 2022.

Closure may also be elusive for victims’ kin even if a killer is executed, Raven said.

“It’s hard to comprehend and understand these personal and deep feelings if you haven’t walked in their shoes,” he said.

In the Spotlight is a Sacramento Bee series that digs into the high-profile local issues that readers care most about. Story idea? Email metro@sacbee.com.

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