As the news of Gov. Newsom's moratorium rippled through the prison, one inmate says there were no celebrations, no cheers among the 737 condemned men on the largest death row in the United States
Colleen Hicks stands in her backyard in Bolinas, California. Hicks has high hopes that her boyfriend Douglas"Chief" Stankewitz, who has been on death row for 42-years, will be freed after Gov. Gavin Newsom's moratorium on the death penalty.
As the news about Newsom rippled through San Quentin, Stankewitz said in a telephone interview Thursday, there were no celebrations, no cheers among the 737 condemned men on the largest death row in the United States. And Franklin E. Zimring, a law professor at UC Berkeley, points to the Stankewitz case as proof of California’s “irrational” system and its voters’ doubts about the ultimate sanction. The Golden State, he says, has “an honorary death penalty.” And that is no accident.
That’s where Graybeal was shot in the head. Brown testified that Stankewitz pulled the trigger. But 15 years later, he recanted. In a four-page declaration, he said he had been coerced by the Fresno district attorney, told that he would be charged with murder if he did not testify. Stankewitz’s first conviction was thrown out in 1982. He was retried in 1983, convicted again and sentenced to death again. In 2012, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals tossed out Stankewitz’s death sentence and ordered he either be given life in prison without the possibility of parole or be tried again to determine his punishment.Curtis L.
Over the years, Wayne Graybeal, Theresa’s father-in-law, largely spoke for the family. He died of bladder cancer in 2017.
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