By Chauncey Bailey

Assemblymember Wilma Chan (D-Oakland) has announced she is signing on to author legislation that would place a two-year moratorium on executions in California.
    “As long as there is a risk of executing prisoners who are innocent, we need to take a time out and look at this issue more closely. For example, nationally, 119 death-row inmates have been found to be innocent and subsequently exonerated,” said Chan.
    The NAACP has called for a national ban and state civil rights leaders worked unsuccessfully to stop the execution of Stanley Tookie Williams, the former gang leader who turned his life around by writing children’s books urging kids to avoid gangs and violence.
    Williams maintained he was not guilty of slaying four people. Many have also claimed that too many blacks are executed.
    Of the 647 inmates on death row in California, 35 percent are blacks, 39 percent are whites and nearly 19 percent are Hispanics.
   “There is a growing body of evidence that indicates that discrimination on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin or economic status plays a role in who is executed,” said Chan.
    In late 2004, the California Senate established the bipartisan California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice to study and determine the extent to which California’s criminal justice system has failed in the past and why innocent people were being convicted, and sometimes executed.
    The Commission is required to make recommendations for reform to the Legislature by no later than Dec. 31, 2007.
    AB 1121 temporarily suspends executions in state prisons until the Legislature fully considers the Commission’s findings and recommendations and has either enacted legislation to end the moratorium or extend it. However, if the Legislature fails to act, the moratorium will end on Jan. 1, 2009.
    AB 1121 is authored by Assemblyman Paul Koretz (D-LA) and co-authored by Assemblymembers Sally Lieber and Mervyn Dymally in addition to Chan. It is currently in the State Assembly and will face its first vote in the Assembly Public Safety Committee when the Legislature reconvenes in January.