The Swarm

Meg Whitman is a death penalty supporter, like Ronald Reagan and most other politicians who have come before her.

Like the others, she is at a loss for how to deal with the issue, specifically what to do about the California death row and its 700-plus condemned inmates.

Appearing before The Bee's editorial board today, Whitman did say she would "like" to find an alternative to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's plan to construct a new death row, at a cost of up to $500 million, although she repeated that California likely will need to build new prisons to relieve overcrowding.

"If we're going to abide by three strikes, if we are going to abide by the death penalty, if we're going to maintain a tough law and order climate here, the truth is over time, we are probably going to have to build more prisons. I would like to not build a death row prison."

The state is seeking bids for the new death row. Bid opening is set for mid-October. Here's a Bee editorial on the proposed new death row.

Attorney General Jerry Brown, scheduled to appear before our editorial board later this week, was the last California governor who opposed the death penalty. Every governor since Brown has vowed to enforce capital punishment.

The result: 13 inmates executed, and 75 others who died of suicide, drug overdoses or natural causes. One who was sentenced here and Missouri was put to death in the Show Me state. The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation compiled this list of death row deaths.

Whitman lamented the process by which inmates have "appeal after appeal after appeal after appeal." Here's a video clip of her talking about the issue.

"We have to enforce the death penalty. Specifically, I don't actually know the answer to this. Basically, we have got to sort of say, 'You can't appeal and appeal and appeal and appeal.'

"There has to be some change in the process by which death row inmates live on for 20, 30 odd years on death row. I think we have to take that up."

Whether they support capital punishment or not, governors long have found there is not much they can do about the appellate process. Indeed, Gov. Reagan appointed California Supreme Court Chief Justice Donald Wright who wrote the 1972 opinion striking down capital punishment, as this obituary recounted.

As Reagan and many other chief executives learned, judges handle cases as they see fit. That's especially true for federal judges in whose courts many death row appeals currently languish.