CUL-DE-SAC

The San Diego County District Attorney is not verbally gifted. But Bonnie Dumanis was on the mark when she called the death penalty in California a “hollow promise.” She said this after accepting a plea agreement with a man named John Gardner who raped and murdered two teenage girls. The killer traded his plea for a sentence of life in prison without parole.

California has, by far, the largest number of people on death row of any state. We have 702 condemned prisoners. And since the state’s death penalty was reinstated in 1976, only thirteen people have been executed. A story in the San Diego Union Tribune pointed out that during that time a total of 86 death-row inmates have died, most from natural causes, a few by suicide and even fewer by execution.

If justice delayed is justice denied, then hundreds of families of murder victims in California are being denied justice. In fact, the families who saw the killers of their sons, daughters, spouses and parents die of natural causes in San Quentin will be denied justice forever. This was clearly one of the reasons why the parents of those teenage girls agreed that the DA should settle for life in prison without parole. The death penalty in California is a cruel joke, and victims’ families are the butt of it.

I don’t know why death penalty proceedings for California convicts take decades. All condemned prisoners are guaranteed appeals to the State Supreme Court and federal district court. The California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice wrote in a report that there’s a serious shortage of state public defenders to handle death penalty appeals.

But I suspect the real problem is that the people who run things in this state are not comfortable with the death penalty. Their reticence has led to endless delays in the process. The death penalty is a broken apparatus they don’t want to fix.

There are a lot of good reasons  to be uncomfortable with the death penalty. Allowing the state to kill, on behalf of its residents, is morally questionable. Also, our justice system is not perfect. That means the death penalty will inevitably lead to innocent people being put to death.

If we agree on nothing else we must agree that California’s death penalty is a costly farce and it has to change. I see two ways. The first option, and certainly the most practical, is to simply get rid of it. Make life in prison without parole the ultimate punishment, reserved for the most horrible crimes.

The second possibility is to keep the death penalty, but require a higher burden of proof to sentence a person to death. Proof beyond a reasonable doubt isn’t enough. The state should have to prove its case beyond a shadow of doubt before it can kill a convict. That would dramatically reduce the number of people we put on death row, and it would make the appellate system less cumbersome and less necessary.

Dropping crimes rates and the passing of time have caused public opinion in California to turn against the death penalty, even though a majority still support it. I hope we will evolve into a society that no longer needs or wants the death penalty. But if society demands it, society should also demand a death penalty that protects the rights of the condemned and the rights of victims’ families, who deserve a prompt exercise of justice.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about crime in my neighborhood, illustrated by the theft of a skateboard from my front yard. My effort to mobilize the community and find the offender has, so far, failed.

But this photograph could make a difference. This is not the stolen skateboard. But it’s a duplicate they made for me at Sk8box. So if you see this skateboard anywhere near Normal Heights, and it’s not being used by my family, let me know. Remember the green wheels.

Last Thursday afternoon I was at work, writing a story about the San Diego appearance of FLOTUS (First Lady Of The United States). More than one female co-worker approached me wearing a large grin and asking me what it was like to get close to Michelle Obama.

Unfortunately press availability is not something you can expect from FLOTUS, to say nothing of POTUS. Mrs. Obama visited an urban garden in City Heights, a low-income part of San Diego, as part of her campaign against childhood obesity. Beforehand the news media were told 1)The First Lady would take no questions 2)We would need to be there at least an hour and a half before her scheduled speech 3)Our recording or photographic equipment would need to arrive four hours before her scheduled speech.

After I got there, I also learned that reporters and photographers would be confined to what you might call a press corral. This was a roped-off section of the viewing area where we had to remain until FLOTUS stepped into a black SUV and made her escape. It was a day of following Secret Service instructions and standing for a long time in the sun, waiting to hear a speech that was okay but not memorable.

Still, lots of people (Democrats probably) assumed I’d be stoked about seeing Michelle Obama.

I’m not old enough to remember John and Jackie Kennedy, though my parents claim I attended a Kennedy speech wearing diapers. The Kennedy family celebrity must have been similar to the Obama aura. Like the Kennedys, the Obamas are young, charismatic and — most importantly — attractive. The man who introduced Michelle Obama Thursday hit it on the head when he called her a rock star.

The Obamas live in a different country, or course. The Kennedys worked for a public that was more forgiving, more trusting of its leaders and more united, having yet to experience the cultural rifts that would arrive in the late sixties.  Besides, the Kennedys were white and therefore insulated from the strong, complex emotions that race engenders in the USA.

So it was ironic that Jack Kennedy was murdered in Dallas. After showering him with a love that allowed us to ignore his faults and his many extramarital affairs, America took the form of Lee Harvey Oswald and shot him dead. And that is why I was confined to a press corral last Thursday covering FLOTUS.

I did actually get fairly close to Michelle Obama. She walked past our corral as she waved to supporters and headed toward her black SUV. She was accompanied by a white Secret Service agent who wore sun glasses, had a shaven head and looked like he was 6 feet 10 inches tall. Michelle Obama looked pretty and warm-hearted, just like she does on TV.

That’s what I’ll tell people who ask me what it was like to be in the presence of FLOTUS. She looks like she does on television. So if you love Michelle Obama, just keep loving her. And we can still hope the Obamas will become a first family like the Kennedys in the sense that most people seem to like them.

There’s a Carmelite Monastery on the edge of a cliff above Mission Valley just a quarter-mile from my house. I’ve walked there many times with family and friends to see their coveted gardens. You used to be able to ring a doorbell to summon one of the sisters, who would remain unseen while she gave you a key by putting it on a shelf in a rotating chamber. The key would circle to your side of the wall and you could let yourself into the church

Shutting yourself off from the view of the world may seem strange to the spiritually undeveloped. But it’s not so different from what we’re all doing in our tech-based, motorized world.

The car, the phone, the TV and their many high-tech cousins have made us very much like cloistered ascetics who forswear life in society. We meet each other less and less as the car has replaced the trolley and the wide-screen TV has begun to replace the movie theater. An Internet connection may be our only social link to the outside world. Being a blogger, I guess I shouldn’t talk.

Consider telecommuters.  They may be a good thing since they don’t waste space and they don’t waste gas. Look a little closer and you realize telecommuting depends on two modern trends: The large house and the small family. It’s hard to imagine how you could concentrate on a work project if you don’t have a room of your own and are constantly interrupted by the noisy demands of children.

We’ve got all these home PCs and I supposed they should be put to constructive use. But heading off to work is one of the few remaining activities that gets us out of the house. What happens when even that goes away?

Will we devolve into some other creature as our social skills atrophy? Will we develop over-sized butts and long fingers and learn to reproduce without any sexual contact? At least the nuns don’t have to be concerned about that. My advice is we need to get out more. Sunny San Diego is an absurd place to develop Vitamin D deficiency.

I saw my neighbor Chuck outside his house yesterday and I asked him how much you get for winning the Pulitzer Prize. It was a good question because his wife, Rae, just won the prize for her book of poetry called Versed. He said it was only ten thousand dollars and it seemed to me you should get more than that. But I told him to pass along congratulations anyway.

Rae lives there. I just didn’t happen to see her out in the yard that day.

Poetry is something most of us don’t read, and I’m embarrassed to say I haven’t read any of Rae’s poetry. Now, I’m sure I will. I did know that Rae fought a battle with cancer. But she dug herself out of that hole and wrote about it in Versed.

Chuck told me Rae heard about the Pulitzer one day before her birthday. It was quite a birthday present though there’s no better present than life and she got that one too. Here’s to Rae and her good fortune.

If you see a skateboard in Normal Heights that has green long-board wheels and the word “Think” written in green letters on the bottom, call me so I can have a chat with the person who took it. The board I got for my son’s tenth birthday was stolen from the front of my house just a couple of days after it was gifted.

I haven’t complained much about crime in my neighborhood even though it happens. In the dozen years I’ve lived here I’ve had a car window smashed and the car burgled. I think they stole $10 in change. I’ve had another car key-scratched. Thieves ransacked my garage after they found my garage door opener in an unlocked car. In one very odd event, someone dug up a small succulent plant on my front berm and made off with it.

But nobody in my family has been mugged, assaulted or threatened. As far as I know nobody has even tried to break into my house. It’s been quite a switch from the crime waves of the 80s and 90s. The local media’s obsession with crime is crazy in light of what’s really going on. If you’re a crime victim statistics mean nothing. Even so, crime has been going down for the past ten years and it shows.

But then there was that skateboard.

Its theft violated a father’s act of love. The guys at SK8Box on Adams Avenue, where I bought the board, said they’d ask around and watch for it in local skate spots. I don’t expect them to nail the jerk but I’m sure their network has a better shot than the SDPD. My neighborhood isn’t quite a small town but can be hard to hide in Normal Heights.

Meantime, I’ll be watching for green wheels and a green “Think” as I see skateboarders — most of them innocent I’m sure — role through curb cuts and cross the street and as they do circles on the  basketball court in 39th Street Park. Thieves beware the vigilante force. Honest folk… let me know if you see green wheels.