Editorials

SAN FRANCISCO — A judge on Tuesday set the stage for California’s next execution, ordering San Francisco murderer Robert Massie to die March 27 in San Quentin. 

The condemned prisoner dropped his appeals last month after 21 years on death row, paving the way for a rare execution in the state with the largest number of condemned inmates. 

Massie is to die by lethal injection for the 1979 murder of a San Francisco liquor store owner. Of nearly 600 condemned men and women in California, eight inmates have been executed since 1978, the year state voters reinstituted capital punishment. The last California execution was of serial killer Darrell Rich last March. 

At Massie’s request, U.S. District Judge Charles Legge dismissed Massie’s federal appeals in January and San Francisco County Superior Judge Philip Moscone set an execution date Tuesday afternoon. 

Moscone set the date after San Francisco District Attorney Terence Hallinan spoke briefly against the death penalty.  

Hallinan called execution “a primitive code of retribution” that does not deter crime and is applied disproportionately to racial minorities. 

In his petition to end his appeals, Massie told Legge that he would rather die than continue living on death row in San Quentin. He said life on death row is a “lingering death.” 

Even if his death sentence is reversed or commuted by an appeal, he would remain in prison for the rest of his life for shooting Boris Naumoff to death at a San Francisco liquor store. That is why he said he wants a “swift execution.” 

California’s condemned inmates are more likely to die of old age or illness than by execution. More than 100 inmates have been on death row for more than 15 years. 

One reason for the backlog of death row inmates is that about 160 inmates have not been provided a lawyer for their first and mandatory appeal to the California Supreme Court, which has no timeline to rule on cases. After the state Supreme Court, which upheld Massie’s sentence in 1998, defendants enter a maze of federal appeals. 

The state Corrections Department, which runs San Quentin, is asking a federal appeals panel to block a federal court order allowing assembled witnesses at San Quentin to view executions in their entirety. 

Opposing the state’s petition are the media and the American Civil Liberties Union, which jointly convinced a judge in July to order the state to abolish the practice of partial viewings of lethal injections.