Shurtleff urges activism over death penalty appeals

Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff is cranking up the phone tree by urging his constituents to call their lawmakers to support a controversial bill that gives the Utah Legislature authority to decide death penalty appeals.

"Our current justice system is broken. The death penalty in Utah has become a myth. Death row inmates are winning a war of attrition," Shurtleff wrote Tuesday in his personal blog on the attorney general's Web site.

Shurtleff has the backing of some families of murder victims, but has been criticized by the legal community which denounced the proposal as so extreme and radical that it would mar the constitution, violate individual rights to due process and undermine the bedrock principle of the separation of powers among the three branches of government.

"Those convicted of crime deserve a fair trial, a direct appeal, and an opportunity to prove that their constitutional rights were denied in trial or on appeal. But at some point, a guilty criminal's right to re-litigate his case must give way to the community's right to finality and the victims' right to closure," Shurtleff wrote. "Our current system of endless appeals gives guilty inmates more process than they deserve, and innocent victims much less. The system is broken. We need this constitutional amendment to set the scales of justice back into balance."

There are 10 inmates currently on death row in Utah. The last person executed was Joseph Mitchell Parsons in 1999 for the stabbing death of Richard Ernest in 1987.

On his blog, Shurtleff defended his push for Senate Joint Resolution 14.

"Some in the media have misstated the purpose and intent of this legislation and vilified me and my office for bringing it. The Senate Judiciary Committee voted in favor of SJR14 and the whole Senate will likely vote on it next week," he wrote. "Please stand up for the victims of heinous crimes still waiting for justice and call your senator."

E-MAIL: bwinslow@desnews.com