Shujaa Graham, wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death for a murder he didn’t commit, spent six years on California’s death row. Amidst despair and thoughts of indifference towards life, he held onto a dream of fighting racism within the prison system and capital punishment process.
After his exoneration in 1981, Graham became part of the Witness to Innocence organization. Together with civil rights groups, he is now leading a campaign to challenge the death penalty system in California.
The petition filed to the state supreme court argues that the system is statistically proven to disproportionately target minorities, violating the state constitutional guarantees of equal protection under the law. The coalition seeks to bar California officials from pursuing or carrying out any death sentences for the foreseeable future.
Patricia Okonta, an attorney at the Legal Defense Fund, emphasizes the urgency of the challenge, citing pervasive racial bias in the application of the death penalty law. The action names California Attorney General Rob Bonta as the defendant, who himself has called the death penalty inhumane and discriminatory.
Statistics show that in California, Black defendants are almost nine times more likely to receive a death sentence than others, while Latinos are more than six times more likely. The filing also alleges other issues with the process, including a lack of uniform criteria for seeking the death penalty, personal discretion of prosecutors, and the exclusion of potential jurors who oppose capital punishment.
Advocates argue that the systemic bias ‘whitewashes’ the capital eligible pool, as Black people tend to oppose capital punishment more frequently than white peers. They maintain that individual legal challenges are no longer sufficient, citing the slow pace of the appeals process and the inadequacy of the state’s habeas process.
The death penalty’s historical links to racism, lynching, and extra-judicial violence, especially in the US South, are well-documented. California, with its substantial death row population, is also part of this conversation. Despite a moratorium on executions and efforts to transition to a post-execution paradigm, prosecutors continue to seek new death sentences.
The division over capital punishment in California reflects the larger debate across the country. While a slim majority of states retain the death penalty, only a handful have carried out executions in recent years. Public opinion polls show a similar ambivalence, with a majority supporting the death penalty but also acknowledging its unfair application.
The future of the death penalty remains uncertain. Shujaa Graham, the exoneree, hopes to live long enough to witness its abolition, as in most other Western democracies. He envisions a day when people will ask about capital punishment and racism as things of the past. The Independent and the Responsible Business Initiative for Justice (RBIJ) have launched a joint campaign calling for an end to the death penalty in the US.
