Playing Politics With Crime

The apparent failure of the system in the King case may discourage blacks and other minorities from even voting on the measure. "They may think, 'Why go [to the polls] if nothing has worked?'" says Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, a political analyst at the Claremont Graduate School. That would allow suburbanites again to control the ballot and would restart the old cycle: crime leading to fear, and fear distorting and blurring images of brutality that once seemed very clear.

1956: 49% support death penalty

1982: Deukmejian elected governor after opposing handgun control

1986: 3 Cailfornia Supreme Court justices who oppose death penalty lose election

1992: 80% support death penalty; Robert Harris put to death, first execution since 1967

© 1992