In Yolo County, just west of

Sacramento, the decision of whether to prosecute the death penalty rests with one man, Dist.

thoughtful

Jeff Reising.

The same, of course, applies to California’s other 57 counties, where the final decision is made by the District Attorney. But, as Reisig told me when I recently sat down with him, “It’s absolutely fair to say that in 58 California counties, every DA is probably doing it differently.”

Reisig may soon face that decision again, for about the 30th time in his more than 16 years in office, in the case of the young man charged with a series of stabbings that terrorized the nearby college town of Davis. Over the course of a few days in April, two men were killed and a

third

woman was stabbed through the fabric of her tent, leaving her alive but in critical condition.

The suspect in the unexplained spate of violence is

21 year old

Carlos Reales Dominguez, a former UC Davis student who has pleaded not guilty and remains in custody at the Yolo County Jail.

It’s the kind of terrifying and inexplicable case that leaves many of us divided on what justice might look like if Dominguez is finally found competent to stand trial, especially in a state where the death penalty is still on the books, but in practice impossible since Gov. Gavin Newsom put a moratorium on it in 2019 with an executive order and closed the state death chamber at San Quentin State Prison.

So I asked Reisig how he will decide and why.

Of course, Reisig can’t speak in specific terms about the Dominguez case, but he was willing to walk me through the process he generally uses, and how both the law and sentiment

of Yolo residents weigh in.

First, he told me he doesn’t care about Newsom’s board freeze.

Reisig even said he thinks it was an authoritarian oversight on the governor’s part to get involved in the death penalty debate after voters in both 2012 and 2016 decided to keep the option on the books. He points out that another governor could reverse Newsom’s order, though that’s unlikely in dark blue California.

The moratorium “has no basis, no bearing on whether or not I do my job,” Reisig said. “If the voters, you know, get another chance at an initiative and they decline [the death penalty], so come along. That’s democracy. But what we’re going through now, with the governor’s self-imposed moratorium, I think, really isn’t democracy.”

Thickets pointed out that only a few species

cases qualify for the death penalty, usually cases of first-degree murder with limited special circumstances, such as lying in wait or killing a police officer. So the first part of his decision is just walking through the law to see if a case qualifies.

On the face of it, this case might, given the allegations. But at a recent hearing, a judge ordered an evaluation of Dominguez’s mental competence, and he unsuccessfully asked to represent himself. That first competency hearing will take place on June 20 and will likely begin a lengthy process to determine his eligibility for trial.

For Reisig, if a defendant is determined to have a mental illness that was instrumental in committing the crime, he will not pursue the death penalty. He thinks it is “profoundly” wrong to demand the death penalty for someone who cannot understand his actions, which is obvious. But I promise you some DAs would

fight match

a finding of mental incompetence no matter what.

If the mental competence is present and qualifies the case legally, Reisig will begin its own internal investigation that looks not only at the crime, but also at circumstances that make it worse than the average capital murder (aggravating factors), as well as mitigating factors such as whether the person was under duress which can offer any explanation.

He also considers the “special K” evidence, named for its position in the applicable criminal code, which is effectively a catchall term for everything else relevant.

“And for that, you literally go back to birth,” he said. “Look, has this person shown violence all their life? Are they some sort of Charles Manson? Or is it just one and done?”

Interestingly, while a DA can account for age in the

ir

final decision, age is not considered a mitigating factor, meaning suspects don’t get a break just because they’re youthful.

“Just because someone is young, in their 20s or whatever, doesn’t mean that under the law [they’re] are ineligible or inappropriate for the death penalty,” he said.

Once all that evidence is gathered, he gets his top advisers together and they talk about it. “We talk about it, we debate about it,” he told me. “We’re digging, we’re asking more questions. Sometimes those conversations can last hours, sometimes it’s days, sometimes we think about it for weeks.”

But once that team makes a recommendation, “I’ll make the decision,” he said.

Part of that last call is whether he thinks he

can win in court.

Reisig calls Yolo “the most liberal county from Bakersfield to the Oregon border.” That’s one reason why, in his nearly two decades as chief prosecutor, he has chosen to carry out the death penalty only once: in the 2008 murder of the Yolo County Sheriff’s Deputy.

Jose Antonio Diaz

(although he also inherited a death penalty case from his predecessor).

“That’s come up many times, where the case is on his face, we can all look at it and say, ‘Yeah, this guy is really extreme. Like he’s a psychopath. This is terrible. He meets all the legal elements .’ But will a jury of people from Yolo County choose that? And that, I mean, it changes from county to county, right?”

Reisig said that because “people have such entrenched views” about the death penalty, it can be difficult to even seat a jury in a capital case. He points out that the law requires a juror to be prepared to consider life in prison without the possibility of parole or the death penalty. “Well, good luck,” he said of finding jurors willing to weigh both.

“People come in and say, ‘No, I will never vote for the death penalty,’ or ‘This man, this person should always get the death penalty,'” he said. “And so I don’t want to pass a death sentence on anyone I know. Based on my experience, I have no chance of getting 12 people to agree.”

In the case of Diaz’s murder, Reisig won a death penalty in 2011

Marco Topete

after a jury deliberated for days. Reisig said he and the defense team screened more than 600 jurors before their panel was given a tough job in a county of about 200,000 people.

In the case he inherited from a previous prosecutor, the 2005 murder of CHP officer

Andy Stevens

the jury needed just two days to decide on the death penalty for it

Brendt Anthony Volarvich

then 22 and a member of a white pride gang called the Peckerwoods.

Before I left, I asked Reisig if he is for or against the death penalty, and he told me it’s not about his personal beliefs, but “if the people vote to abolish the death penalty, I won’t lose a single one.” sleep on it.”

Personally, I am against it precisely because there is so much discretion in the way it is applied. How can we ever be sure it’s fair regardless of the moral debate?

According to the Death Penalty Information Center, support for the death penalty has dropped dramatically across the country, as have the number of executions and death sentences. In 1999, executions reached their highest annual number with 98 people put to death. Death sentences peaked a few years earlier in 1996, with 315 death sentences. In 2022, there were 18 executions and 20 new death sentences

goods

passed on in the US

Two of those death sentences in 2022 were in California, and nearly 700 people (including more than 20 women) are living under death sentences here.

But voters in California remain ambivalent about changing our law. A 2021 UC Berkeley poll examining the possibility of putting the issue back to voters found that 44% said they would vote to repeal the state’s death penalty law, 35% would vote to repeal it retained and 21% remained undecided.

So, as Reisig points out, the death penalty may be used sparingly, but it’s on the books and prosecutors will continue to consider it. That means that no matter where each of us stands, Reisig’s transparency is important, it allows us to understand how these life and death decisions are made.

Because they are still made every day all over California.