SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 15 (UPI) -- With their client's date with death looming and all appeals exhausted, lawyers for a death row inmate have gone to court seeking an order requiring California's lieutenant governor to review their last-ditch clemency request rather than Gov. Gray Davis, whom they allege has a long-standing bias against canceling executions.
A hearing was scheduled for Thursday before a federal judge in San Francisco on a lawsuit that was filed Monday by the public defenders representing Stephen Anderson, who is scheduled to be put to death on Jan. 26 for the 1981 murder of an elderly woman in San Bernardino County.
Anderson's attorneys are seeking a temporary restraining order that would halt the execution until the suit is decided.
Anderson's Los Angeles-based public defenders, Harry Simon and Margo Rocconi, contend that Gov. Davis has developed a pattern of rejecting clemency requests that is not based on the merits of the case but rather on personal attitudes. As a result, Gov. Davis should recuse himself from ruling on Anderson's request and allow Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante to instead make the call.
"(The governor) has adopted a policy against any form of leniency for individuals convicted of murder that precludes (Anderson) from receiving a fair adjudication of his request for clemency," according to the suit filed in San Francisco federal court. "Gov. Davis' statements and actions provide ample evidence of his extraordinary biases against all sorts of requests for leniency by prisoners seeking mercy for serious offenses."
Gov. Davis has never granted a clemency request, nor did his predecessor, Pete Wilson. The last California governor to call off an execution, the Los Angeles Times said Tuesday, was Ronald Reagan in 1967.
While the governor alone decides whether or not to grant clemency to an inmate, Anderson's lawyers contend that a 1998 Supreme Court decision established minimal guidelines for governors to follow.
Intervention by a court might be warranted, the Supreme Court said, if "a state official flipped a coin to determine whether to grant clemency, or in a case where the state arbitrarily denied a prisoner any access to its clemency process."
Gov. Davis' office responded to Anderson's attorneys in a letter stating that the governor alone has the constitutional authority to decide clemency requests and "intends to consider Mr. Anderson's application thoroughly, and to give it the careful, individualized attention it merits."
