KTLA News: "Police Chief Ed Davis speaks about Supreme Court ruling on death penalty" (1972)

Uh I certainly do because I think uh this decision of the United States Supreme Court can be reversed as soon as there's one additional appointment to the United States Supreme Court. And if uh we don't change it that way, uh I'm going to advocate uh through the International Association of Chiefs of Police that we attempt to change the United States Constitution. Uh we can do it by a twothirds vote of both houses and then ratification by uh the states, 3/4s of the states, or we can do it by a constitutional convention. And so if this decision stands, I'm going to lead a movement to change the Constitution of the United States. And I'm convinced the people of the United States will very strongly support that decision by the US Supreme Court uh I think is an absurdity. Uh, every school boy who read the constitution in grammar school remembers that it said there should only be bail uh for uh non- capital cases under certain circumstances. Well, when the framers of the constitution talked about capital cases or death penalty cases, the people when they voted for that constitution to ratify it were in effect ratifying the death penalty. And so we have an unfortunate case where uh five uh out of nine justices uh forget that fundamental fact that they should have learned in grammar school. And I think it brings up the very important point that the time has come when uh we should have appointed to the Supreme Court some non lawyers. Uh the Supreme Court is composed entirely of lawyers. The law that's being interpreted is the constitution which is the law which is written by the people not by legislative bodies and what it requires is plain simple uh country boy interpretation of what that organic uh law is and I think that we need some plain simple men or ladies sitting on that court who are not lawyers who don't get involved in technicalities who will interpret it as it Another thing that's pointed up by the decision today uh is that it's the same as the five four decisions uh during the early era of the Warren uh administration of the court where the law was changed by just a very slight majority vote and I think we have to change the constitution to provide that in interpreting the constitution that there should be at least a twothirds vote of the Supreme Court. This would require six votes instead of five. Uh under such a circumstance uh that judgment would not have come down the way it did. Uh another thing that uh this decision points up is the total unresponsiveness of the federal judiciary to the will of the people. Uh unfortunately, federal judges are appointed uh for lifetime. The constitution states on good behavior. A good behavior obviously is uh nothing worse than the behavior of Justice Douglas, for example. And so justices in effect are appointed for life. I think the time has come when uh we have to take Alexander Hamilton's advice when he was selling the constitution. He said that the cure to ills in a representative form of government is to change the men. And I think uh we need to change some of the men on the United States Supreme Court. But because they're there for life, they can stay on and on and on and thwart the will of the people uh expressed through uh their president for example because it's significant that this decision uh was rendered by the remnants of the Warren Court. All five members who came out to abolish the death penalty in certain cases uh were Warren Court members and the four appointees of President Nixon uh stood firm and fast in opposing the decision. Uh I think the recent election of President Nixon was somewhat of a indication of the will of the people. The confirmation of these justices, the four who were against it, indicated a will of the United States Senate. And so I think we've uh come to the point where we have to make the federal judges stand for election the same as the executive branch of government and the legislative branch of government. This would allow some turnover in the court so that their decisions could be more contemporary. morale of the >> do you think the initiative should remain on the ballot? No, it wouldn't because uh the cost of keeping a man in life imprisonment, remember when you're dealing with uh your convicted felons,