DPIC Podcast: Contra Costa District Attorney Diana Becton on Bringing Fairness and Equity to Criminal Legal Reform and Ending the Death Penalty

Within the January 2022 episode of Discussions with DPIC, Contra Costa County, California District Lawyer Diana Becton (pictured), speaks with Loss of life Penalty Data Middle Government Director Robert Dunham in regards to the rise in reform prosecutors throughout the nation, the inherent flaws in capital punishment that led her to work alongside different reform prosecutors to finish the demise penalty, and her efforts as district lawyer to deliver equity and fairness to the felony authorized system.

Becton is the primary girl and first African American to function District Lawyer in Contra Costa. Previous to turning into District Lawyer in 2017, she served for twenty-two years as a choose within the county, the place she was elected because the Contra County courtroom’s Presiding Decide. She discusses with Dunham how her lived experiences form how she sees her function as a District Lawyer, the pushback towards reform prosecutors who’re ladies of shade by these thinking about sustaining the established order, and the bigger nationwide motion to alter America’s method to felony justice.

The nation’s rising shift away from reflexively punitive insurance policies begins, Becton says, with “the information: that the US with 5% of the world’s inhabitants has turn out to be essentially the most over-incarcerated nation on this planet.”

“We have now come to know that over the past 40 years or so, these very powerful on crime insurance policies which have been in place have led us to this place of very, very excessive incarceration charges in our nation, however actually haven’t stored our communities any safer,” she says. “And we’ve additionally come to see that there are large disparities by way of who goes in to our jail and jail system. Fairly often these individuals are drawn from a few of our most deprived neighborhoods within the nation, in addition to disproportionately affecting minority individuals.”

She tells Dunham, “Communities at the moment are demanding that there be new approaches to this factor that we name security inside our communities. Individuals are asking us to do one thing totally different, that doesn’t end in these excessive incarceration charges, that provides individuals second probabilities in our society, and that deliver some fairness and equity to the system.”

The Loss of life-Penalty System ‘Can’t be Repaired’

Becton observes that related components are driving reform prosecutors to oppose capital punishment. The demise penalty, she says, is “the last word … type of harsh punishment,” which essentially makes it “part of this entire dialog of over-incarceration, and over-punishment in our nation.” She notes that, over the previous half-century, there have been “a whole lot of efforts to attempt to make America’s demise penalty system in some way truthful and in some way simply. However the actuality,” she says, “is that … this method can’t be repaired. It’s damaged. It usually penalizes those that are essentially the most impoverished and poorly represented, those that have psychological sickness, and we all know that race actually performs a really disturbing function by way of who the demise penalty is utilized towards.”

Becton additionally cites the “confirmed danger” of wrongful capital convictions as one more reason the demise penalty is shedding favor. “After you have executed an individual,” she tells Dunham, “that can not be reversed.” As well as, she emphasizes the antagonistic influence capital instances have on the general workload in a prosecutor’s workplace. “As prosecutors,” she says, “we … must allocate and prioritize our division sources. We all know that the demise penalty instances can devour an inordinate quantity of employees time and sources that go properly past the price of searching for another alternate options like life in jail.”

The prices are additionally vital for taxpayers, she notes. California has “a really bloated and racially biased and a really, very costly [death-penalty] system that prices vital sources all through our state,” she says. “In actual fact, in California, we have now spent over $5 billion pursuing executions over the previous 40 or so years. And … we haven’t had an execution since 2006.” With Governor Newsom’s moratorium on executions, “we don’t even see that within the foreseeable future.”

As with current death-penalty repeal efforts in Virginia and Utah, Becton sees reform prosecutors altering the tenor of the general public debate. She is among the founding members of the Prosecutors Alliance of California, a bunch of reform prosecutors who’re collectively pushing for felony justice reform. “[T]ypically, there’s solely been one voice on the desk [from law enforcement] and that voice is just not sometimes … in favor of felony justice reform,” she observes. The Prosecutors Alliance, which incorporates Los Angeles District Lawyer George Gascón, San Francisco District Lawyer Chesa Boudin, and San Joaquin District Lawyer Tori Verber Salazar amongst its members, “lend a unique view, … lend a unique voice to what it means to have protected communities” and supply a voice for progressive felony justice laws and modifications within the state’s felony justice system. “And so, sure, we took a stand” on Governor Newsom’s moratorium and the last word abolition of the demise penalty, Becton instructed Dunham. “We took a stand statewide,” Becton says, including that she is going to “proceed to work publicly to assist laws that may repeal and finish the demise penalty in California and certainly, in our nation.”

A New Voice on the Desk

The prosecutor, Becton observes, has turn out to be “essentially the most highly effective actor in our felony justice system and has a lot affect over what occurs by way of equity and by way of fairness in our communities.” As the primary girl and first African American to function District Lawyer, the voice she provides to the dialogue is one which has been largely absent from prosecutorial determination making.

“All of us are a product of our experiences,” she says. “And so after I present up, I imply, initially, I’m a black girl. And I’m the primary individual to be on this place in my county for the reason that workplace was established in 1850. And never solely my experiences as a mom, elevating two black sons, but in addition my experiences in my very own group, seeing the devastation on so many lives, and on so many households, from this overly harsh felony justice system.” Prosecutors, she says, are “the gatekeepers of this justice system. And we have now to all the time bear in mind our function. So, as I deliver all of these experiences to the desk with me, … I feel it provides me a degree of compassion to this work, that I deliver because the gatekeeper.”

The mere presence of Black ladies in positions of authority has made them lightning rods for criticism and retaliation. In 2017, Florida Governor Rick Scott removed State Attorney Aramis Ayala from greater than twenty homicide instances as a result of she introduced that her workplace wouldn’t search the demise penalty. In 2021, the Alabama courts suspended Jefferson County Judge Tracie Todd for 90 days with out pay n what gave the impression to be retaliation for her rulings discovering the state’s demise penalty practices unconstitutional and barring the demise penalty in 4 instances.

In response to a query by Dunham as as to if she had skilled any backlash for her reform positions, Becton responded: “Tons. … [T] right here’s roughly 2,400 elected prosecutors in our nation,” Becton mentioned, “and fewer than 1% of those that are elected are ladies of shade. So, it’s nearly as if we’re in locations the place individuals really feel that we shouldn’t be and we’re doing issues and making choices that individuals really feel we shouldn’t be making. And so there was an enormous backlash throughout the nation.”

Becton factors to political assaults on different African American prosecutors, together with Kim Fox in Chicago, Kim Gardner in St. Louis, and Rachel Rollins in Boston, and says “All of us across the nation … have come to know that we’re handled a lot extra harshly, even than our personal brothers who’re on our aspect on this motion for felony justice reform. … It’s a relentless battle, it’s a relentless battle … as we sit in these locations of energy the place individuals actually don’t need us to be.”

In California, Governor Newsom and district attorneys Gascón and Boudin have been focused for recollects. Requested whether or not these efforts have had a chilling impact on her pursuit of authorized reform, Becton mentioned: “these of us who’re doing this work, we acknowledge that this can be a motion, similar to a civil rights motion, which took a whole lot of time to have the ability to effectuate change. We will’t enable what occurs day-to-day to relax our potential to be daring in our insurance policies and to maneuver ahead with the work that we all know is so vital.”

She concludes, “All of us, on the finish of the day, we perceive that we’re in a battle, however we additionally imagine deeply that the arc of the universe undoubtedly bends in the direction of justice. And so we do the work. We present up day-after-day. And we sustain the battle, it doesn’t matter what is going on across the nation, it doesn’t matter what’s occurring in our native jurisdictions, as a result of we perceive that we’re half of a bigger motion.”