By Lisa Leff, The Associated Press
San Francisco (AP) -- California Attorney General Bill Lockyer said Tuesday that while he would have pursued the death penalty against a man accused of killing a San Francisco police officer, the local district attorney’s failure to do so wasn’t reason for his office to take over the case.
Lockyer, announcing the results of an “abuse of discretion” review requested by the slain officer’s family, the city’s police union and a group of 42 state lawmakers, said he was satisfied that District Attorney Kamala Harris based her decision on mitigating facts, not just her personal opposition to capital punishment.
As a result, Lockyer said, the state lacks grounds for assuming the prosecution of David Hill, 21, who has been charged with first-degree murder in the April 10 shooting death of Office Isaac Espinoza, 29.
“It’s not a conclusion that says it’s the right decision to make or the wrong decision,” Lockyer said of his staff’s six-week inquiry. “If I was making an independent decision, it might be different than the one she made, but that is not the question for us.”
Lockyer said he had told the San Francisco Police Officers Association, as well as Espinoza’s widow and mother, about the outcome of his inquiry. He said their reaction was “both understanding of our role and disappointment.”
Harris, who campaigned on an anti-death penalty platform before she took office in January, plans to seek a sentence of life without the possibility of parole when Hill goes to trial. in a statement, she said that pursuing stiffer penalties for gun crimes is part of her approach for reducing the city’s soaring murder rate.
“My top concern is the prosecution of this case, and we are moving full speed ahead to ensure Officer Espinoza’s killer never sees the light of day,” Harris said. “What is most important now is that we move forward as a city to stop the violence.”
Harris has said that besides a need to fulfill her campaign promise, her call in the Espinoza case was based on a determination that it would be a waste of time and money to pursue a death penalty conviction in San Francisco, where juries have only twice sentenced criminals to death in the last 40 years.
Hill’s age and lack of an adult arrest record, along with the fact that Espinoza was in an unmarked police car the night he was killed, also contributed to her decision, she said.
During a news conference Tuesday, Lockyer said he still thinks a solid case could be made for seeking the death penalty against Hill, including that he is accused of using an AK-47 assault weapon in Espinoza’s slaying and fired off 17 rounds that also injured the officer’s partner.
“Do I, as a professional prosecutor, think you can find a jury in San Francisco to decide that execution is a just penalty? My opinion is yes you could, but it would not be easy,” he said. “My inclination would have been to seek the death penalty and let the jury decide the two options.”
Lockyer, speaking at the annual California Peace Officers Memorial Ceremony on May 7, said that district attorneys should not make decisions about criminal charges based on philosophical grounds and that he had “an obligation to review the file and to see if we should take the case and prosecute.”
He said Tuesday that his office receives about 250 requests a year to take over prosecutions from local authorities, but only grants a small handful of them.