By Bob Egelko

A state Supreme Court lawsuit claiming California’s death penalty law is incurably racist and should be overturned has drawn some high-powered support from two of the court’s former justices, as well as a number of county prosecutors and state legislators.

“The Court has not hesitated to be at the forefront of important constitutional issues before, and it should not do so now,” said former state Supreme Court Justices Joseph Grodin and Carlos Moreno, joined by J. Anthony Kline, the state’s former senior appeals court justice, and Peter Espinoza, who served as presiding judge of the Los Angeles County Superior Court.

Another brief was filed Tuesday by the Prosecutors Alliance of California, a liberal group whose members include District Attorneys Pamela Price of Alameda County, Diana Becton of Contra Costa County and George Gascón of Los Angeles County, and numerous deputy district attorneys. The third filing came from 18 Democratic legislators, including state Sen. Toni Atkins, former Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon, Bay Area state Sen. Nancy Skinner, and Assembly Members Matt Haney, Ash Kalra, Alex Lee, Phil Ting and Lori Wilson.

“Persistent and pervasive racial disparities infect California’s death penalty system,” the suit said. The former justices voiced similar concerns in Tuesday’s filing, saying Blacks constitute 6.5% of California’s population but 34% of the 640 prisoners who have been sentenced to death in the state.

They also noted that state death penalty laws have been overturned by Supreme Courts in Connecticut, Delaware, New Mexico, New York, Rhode Island and Washington state, the latter in a 2018 ruling that found pervasive racial bias.

The U.S. Supreme Court rejected a racial challenge to Georgia’s death penalty law in 1987, declaring that racial disparities in sentencing are “an inevitable part of our justice system.” But California has its own Constitution that can provide stronger protection for individual rights, the former jurists said, citing the state Supreme Court’s ruling in 1948 declaring California’s ban on interracial marriage unconstitutional, a conclusion the nation’s high court did not reach until 1964.

“Overwhelming studies and statistics, across the state and over many decades, reveal significant and ongoing racial disparities in the death penalty’s application,” the Prosecutors Alliance told the court.

They noted that Gascón, the former San Francisco district attorney who was elected as chief prosecutor of Los Angeles County in 2020, immediately issued a memo to prosecutors in his office saying that “racism and the death penalty are inextricably intertwined” and that the office would no longer seek capital punishment. Price and Becton, the first women to be elected district attorney in their counties, have likewise not sought death sentences in any cases.

The groups also cited Gov. Gavin Newsom’s unique filing with the state Supreme Court in 2020 arguing that the state’s jury instructions in death penalty cases cause racial disparities in sentencing. The court rejected his argument and upheld the current rules in 2021. Newsom, who opposes the death penalty, has imposed a moratorium on executions since taking office in 2019…