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By Cantor Michael Zoosman and Abe Bonowitz
Co-Founder of L'chaim! Jews Against the Death Penalty; Co-Founder of Death Penalty Action
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The Jewish community of California has received ample attention of late regarding the death penalty in California. Most prominently, revelations recently came to light that Jews were routinely excluded from serving as jurors in cases where the death penalty was being sought in California's Alameda County.
When it comes to the death penalty, Jews are of mixed opinions. Consequently, while the natural assumption that excluding Jewish jurors on capital cases might be yet another insidious manifestation of antisemitism, many consider it a compliment. This ostracism serves as a recognition of how Jewish values for fairness inherently conflict with a criminal justice system that is inherently unfair. It denotes a realization of the natural Jewish inclination within its laws and teachings to err on the side of caution. It belies an understanding of the Jewish penchant to question everything and to give deep introspection to matters of great importance.
For more than 2,000 years, Jewish law (Halacha) has allowed for the death penalty while at the same time creating insurmountable hurdles to ensure that an execution according to the law never happens. Contemporary U.S. law comes nowhere near meeting the safeguards insisted upon by the Torah and rabbinic interpretation of scripture. This is one of the main reasons why Jews are almost always involved in leadership in campaigns to halt executions and repeal death penalty laws.
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Of note, this de facto barring of Jews is also incredibly problematic because it assumes that someone who is Jewish cannot apply secular law fairly if it conflicts with one's interpretation of Jewish law. Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen is one observant Californian Jew who recently disproved this assumption in a manner just as noteworthy as the revelation of California Jewish juror exclusion.
No reasonable person would deny the fact that District Attorney Rosen demonstrates a particularly adept understanding of American secular law as it applies to the death penalty. Rosen also was once a prosecutor who believed in capital punishment, and even sought the penalty in various cases. After much discernment, however, he has been quietly preparing to ask courts to change the penalties of the 14 men from his county who currently are awaiting execution. In most of these cases, he would like the court to re-sentence these individuals to serve life without parole. However, in a few separate cases, already completed last year, Rosen has requested that they be given the chance of freedom.
For Rosen, racism and unfairness are two prominent reasons for this change of heart. Of the former, he came to see an inherent racism that the American justice system has handed down, from slavery to mass incarceration and capital punishment. "[W]e are not confident that these sentences were attained without racial bias," his office wrote in a motion to courts in multiple cases. "We cannot defend these sentences, and we believe that implicit bias and structural racism played some role in the death sentence." DA Rosen also indicated that he stopped supporting capital punishment because of a lack of fairness in the criminal legal system saying he used to think that in a perfect world, in a perfectly fair society, there could be some crimes so horrible and awful that the appropriate response would be death. He said we all know this isn't a perfect world where everything is fair, so we don't have the moral authority to carry out executions.
Like Rosen, many Jews want an end to all executions in the United States and worldwide. This includes in the Golden State. In the 35 death sentence cases now under review in Alameda County, there are calls to grant each defendant a new and fair trial, and that the death penalty be removed as a possible punishment in all cases. Just as Attorney Rosen's opinion as a California DA should not be excluded because he is Jewish, neither should the opinions of Jews across California.
Cantor Michael Zoosman, MSM, BCC, is co-founder of L'chaim! Jews Against the Death Penalty and a former Jewish prison chaplain.
Abe Bonowitz is co-founder of Death Penalty Action and co-founder of L'chaim! Jews Against the Death Penalty.
The views expressed in this article are the writers' own.
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