BLIGHT SUPREMACY - genocide. FUNKTIONARY explains, Genocide is the primary means of maintaining Blight Supremacy.

From [HERE] Los Angeles has sentenced more people to death than any other county in the US, and only people of color have received the death penalty under the region’s current prosecutor, a new ACLU report shows.

LA county’s district attorney, Jackie Lacey, has won death sentences for a total of 22 defendants, all people of color, and eight of them were represented by lawyers with serious misconduct charges prior or after their cases, according to a new analysis by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

The overwhelming majority of victims in homicide  cases in Los Angeles are persons of color.  Between  2000 and 2015, Latinx, Black, and Asian homicide  victims collectively comprised 87% of the victims of homicide in Los Angeles County, while white homicide victims constituted only 12%. Nonetheless, more than a third (36%) of the 22 defendants sentenced to death  during Lacey’s term involved at least one white victim.

Lacey’s office has also continued to pursue death penalty trials this year despite the fact that California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, issued a moratorium on capital punishment, with an executive order officially halting executions in the state.

ALSO WONT PROSECUTE COPS WHO KILL BLACKS & LATINOS. Lacey has also faced intense scrutiny for her refusal to prosecute police officers who kill Black and Latino civilians, even in the most egregious circumstances, such as Reginald Thomas, a Black man who cops piled on, stepped on his neck, punched, kicked & struck him in the head w/ batons causing his death [MORE] or last year when she refused to file charges against LAPD officer Clifford Proctor for shooting and killing Brendon Glenn despite LAPD Chief Charlie Beck recommending Lacey prosecute Proctor. [MORE] More than 200 deaths have occurred at the hands of law enforcement since Lacey took office in 2012, according to BLMLA. [MORE] She has not prosecuted a single cop in any of said 200+ cases. She also has a history of hooking up cops who harm or terrorize Blacks & Latinos. In 2017 she offered a no-jail-time felony plea to a white cop who kicked a Black man's head like a football after a bicycle traffic stop. [more] She also declined to file charges against the cops who killed Ezell Ford, an unarmed mentally challenged black man. [MORE] 

The new ACLU report states:

The death penalty is racially biased, and all too often, it is handed down to those with the worst lawyers. Again and again, we have seen that innocent persons were wrongly convicted and sentenced to death in California. As Los Angeles District Attorney Jackie Lacey recognizes, the death penalty does not deter crime and does not provide closure to victims. A formal commission tasked with considering the death penalty in California concluded it is a dysfunctional disaster in practice, and that it would require substantial new funding to address the problems with appellate review. This conclusion was echoed this spring by two justices of the California Supreme Court who described the death penalty in California as “an expensive and dysfunctional system that does not deliver justice or closure in a timely manner, if at all.”

Some key findings:

• In California, 222 people currently sentenced to death are from LA county, representing 31% of all death sentences in the state. (The LA population is only 25% of the statewide figure.)

• LA is one of only three counties in the country to have more than 10 death sentences from 2014 to 2018.

• In the last five years, LA produced more death sentences per capita than any large county in Texas, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Utah or Washington – and sent more people to death row than the states of Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee and Virginia combined.

• Last year, out of 3,100 counties nationwide, LA was one of only four to have more than one death sentence.

• Under Lacey’s tenure, which began in 2012, zero white defendants have been sentenced to death, and her capital punishment sentences disproportionately targeted cases involving white victims. Although 12% of homicide victims in LA county are white, 36% of Lacey’s death penalty wins involved white victims.

• Of the 22 defendants sentenced under Lacey, 13 were Latinx, eight were black and one was Asian.

“This should be profoundly troubling to all of us,” Cassy Stubbs, director of the ACLU Capital Punishment Project, told the Guardian. “Los Angeles is really in a class of its own … It is just such an enormous producer of death sentences in a way that really does not make sense for where we are today.”

Asked about the ACLU’s findings, Lacey sent a general statement to the Guardian on Monday defending her continuing support for capital punishment: “As a career prosecutor, I believe the death penalty is the appropriate punishment for some crimes – a serial killer, someone who tortures and kills a young child, the person who rapes and then kills the victim to silence his only witness or someone who kills a police officer trying to do her job safely.”

[exactly. she will continue to seek the death penalty but on behalf of whom? Los Angelenos have repeatedly and overwhelmingly rejected the death penalty at the ballot box. This is an example of so-called “representative government” prevalent in a “dumbocracy.” In the real world, so-called “representative governments” are constantly doing things their subjects do not want them to do. In reality, the DA is acting on behalf of her masters, serving the interests of elite racists. A major goal of the system of racism white supremacy is to put large numbers of non-whites into greater confinement. Besides the illusion of a representative government her “authority is a farce” to begin with. Can you delegate a right to someone that you don’t have? Where does authority, the right to rule others, come from? Individuals don’t have the right to murder anybody so how can an individual delegate or authorize a government representative to put someone to death?]

The governor’s moratorium affects the 737 inmates currently awaiting execution in California, who will not be put to death while Newsom is in office. Lacey, however, is continuing to seek the death penalty, despite the fact that a majority of voters in LA county have twice voted in favor of death penalty repeal measures.

Defense lawyers in five of the 22 cases under Lacey were suspended or disbarred, which is the most serious discipline for ethics violations, the ACLU said. Defense counsel for two other defendants was put on probation, and the attorney for another is currently facing multiple bar charges.

The ACLU, which reviewed lawyer misconduct records, cited one particularly egregious case in which an attorney declined to make an opening statement – offering no defense at all – and then repeatedly fell asleep during the trial.

“I have serious doubts about the constitutionality of these sentences,” said Stubbs, noting that inadequate representation can have long-lasting consequences.

Failures of defense counsel are key contributors to wrongful convictions, but problems with California’s appellate system means these kinds of mistakes are often exposed decades later, the ACLU said. The last two California death row inmates who were exonerated gained their freedom roughly 25 years after conviction, and those delays could get worse, as the state has an expanding backlog of cases and appeals.

All five people removed from death row after exoneration in the state were people of color.

In California, death penalty expenses total at least $139m per year, and LA county spent an estimated $48.4m seeking executions from 2000 to 2007.

Death penalty trials cost over a million dollars, draining county funds that could be used for community anti-violence programs, education and services for families of victims, said Diane Lucas, senior legal counsel with the Justice Collaborative.

The LA district attorney’s office has recently defended its continuing efforts to seek the death penalty despite Newsom’s order.

In her statement this week, Lacey noted that California voters had not abolished the death penalty, saying: “I will follow the law as prescribed by the citizens of California – whether that is seeking the death penalty for the most heinous crimes or, with the abolition of the death penalty, life without parole.”

The district attorney’s office has “extensive review processes” in place to decide whether to pursue the death penalty and makes recommendations “based on the facts without regard to the race of a defendant or a victim”, Lacey said. Her office sought the death penalty in less than 3% of all eligible cases last year, she said.

Stubbs said it was within Lacey’s power to immediately halt her death penalty cases, accept outstanding plea agreements, and no longer seek capital punishment in new cases.

But if she continued in her current path, the cases would just drag on, said Stubbs, adding: “The extended delays are painful for a lot of the community, including victims.”