The Potential and Limits of Death Penalty Commissions as Tools for Reform: Applying Lessons from Illinois and New Jersey to Understand the California Experience

Abstract

In 2004, the California legislature established the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice, an independent commission charged with reviewing the administration of the state death penalty system, identifying systemic failings, and recommending legislative and administrative measures to address those failings. In its June 2008 final report, the Commission emphatically declared the California death penalty system “dysfunctional.” Although the Commission found flaws of constitutional magnitude endemic to the system, it failed to recommend alternatives – such as replacing the death sentence with a maximum sentence of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole, or narrowing the list of special circumstance factors that render a criminal defendant eligible for the death sentence – that would strike at the root of the problems. Instead, the Commission recommended maintaining the current system and implementing a number of costly legislative, executive, and administrative reforms. California was not the first state to establish an independent commission to review the death penalty. More than fifteen states have created commissions tasked with reviewing and recommending fixes to state death penalty systems.