3 lawmakers join death row fray

Sens. Loni Han­cock and Mark Leno, and As­semb­ly­wo­man Nancy Skin­ner on Fri­day filed a brief in fed­er­al ap­peals court ar­guing that long delays in Cali­for­nia’s hand­ling of Death Row ap­peals “is so broken that the Le­gis­lature, des­pite its ef­forts, has been un­able to fix it.”
They con­tend “such a sys­tem serves no pen­o­lo­gic­al pur­pose, and it vi­ol­ates the Eighth Amend­ment·s pro­hib­i­tion against cruel and un­usu­al pun­ish­ment.