() – When Deborah Gonzalez ran to be elected District Attorney for the Western Judicial Circuit of Georgia in 2020, she made no secret of her position on capital punishment.
“I do not support the death penalty,” Gonzalez wrote on Twitter.now X, in September 2020. “It is cruel and inhumane. As the district attorney of Athens, Georgia, I will not seek it in any prosecution. The eye for an eye argument does not repair our community. Restorative justice does that.”
He has remained true to that stance in his four years as district attorney, including in the recent trial of José Ibarra, the 26-year-old immigrant convicted of the murder of nursing student Laken Riley.
The prosecution in court recommended that Ibarra be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, as did members of Riley’s family.
“Your Honor, I ask you to please give José Ibarra the same thing that you gave us when you made the decision to take Laken’s life and destroy ours. He showed no mercy to Laken when he was pleading for his life,” his mother Allyson Phillips told the court. “I ask that you please sentence this monster to life in prison without the possibility of parole, so that he never again has the opportunity to harm anyone.”
Judge H. Patrick Haggard agreed and handed down the sentence Wednesday afternoon.
It was no surprise to those present in the room. In May, three months after the murder, the Western Judicial Circuit District Attorney’s Office said it would not seek the death penalty in Ibarra’s case. The decision was made “after careful deliberation with the lead prosecutor and support from (Riley’s) family” and “underscores our unwavering commitment to pursuing justice for the most heinous crimes,” according to a news release.
However, the fact that the punishment was not the death penalty sparked criticism from some fervent right-wing advocates, such as MP Marjorie Taylor Greene.
“José Ibarra deserves the death penalty,” wrote the Georgia Republican in X. “Just as Laken’s mother, Allyson, asked the judge, Laken’s evil killer deserves exactly what he gave Laken.”
A spokesperson for the Prosecutor’s Office defended the decision to seek life in prison in an emailed statement Thursday.
“Life without parole is an appropriately serious sentence and is a decision supported by the family, as heard in impact statements during yesterday’s sentencing,” spokeswoman Dawn Brinkley said.
Gonzalez’s stances against the death penalty and in favor of criminal justice reform place her among a wave of progressive prosecutors elected across the country in 2020.
In the final days of Donald Trump’s first administration, Gonzalez co-wrote a opinion for USA Today in which he criticized the “disregard for human life” and the use of the death penalty by the Administration.
“The death penalty represents the worst of us — revenge and cruelty — and does nothing to deter crime or make our communities safer,” Gonzalez and two others wrote. “It is time to abolish capital punishment once and for all. And both the Americans like the States “They are increasingly adopting this reform and aligning themselves with other Western democracies.”
Gonzalez explained his views in more detail in an interview given in January 2022 to the magazine VoyageATL.
“I am a progressive prosecutor, which means that I understand my power and I am committed to using it to confront the injustices of the criminal legal system, to reduce mass incarceration, to reduce the harm to the community due to the prison industrial complex, so that hold people accountable for what they have done through restorative measures and referral programs, to help my community recover with each of the decisions I make,” he said.
These ideas were put to the test in February, when Riley, a 22-year-old nursing student, was killed while jogging across the University of Georgia campus. The suspect in the murder was Ibarra, an immigrant from Venezuela who entered the country illegally.
Four days after the murder, Gonzalez added Sheila Ross of the Council of Prosecutors to a working group on the case.
“We welcome her back as a knowledgeable and respected trial attorney with the experience ready to deliver justice on behalf of Laken Riley,” Gonzalez said in the statement.
Three months later, Gonzalez released the statement announcing that the prosecution would not seek the death penalty.
“Our utmost duty is to ensure that justice is done and that the victim’s family is an integral part of the deliberation process,” Gonzalez said. “We understand that there will be those outside this office who disagree with our decision and seek to exploit this case for political gain. However, the integrity of our judicial process and the pursuit of justice must always transcend political considerations.”
Four years after the 2020 elections, that wave of progressive prosecutors crashed. Across the country, a sharp rise in murders between 2020 and 2022 helped fuel a backlash against officials like Gonzalez.
Earlier this month, she was ousted from office. He only obtained the 41% of the votes in a defeat to independent Kalki Yalamanchili, who had criticized his leadership of the office and his opposition to the death penalty.
“I don’t think the death penalty should be categorically ruled out, and if I saw a case in which I thought it was appropriate, our office would ask for it,” he declared in an interview with Athens Politics Nerd.
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