LOS ANGELES (AP) – California Supreme Court justices expressed skepticism about a ballot measure that would speed up executions by forcing courts to meet deadlines for hearing death sentence appeals. Justices spent most of an hour-long hearing Tuesday focused on the provision of Proposition 66 that would require death penalty appeals to be heard within five years. Currently it can take more than two decades. Jose Alfonso Zelidon-Zepeda of the attorney general’s office says the ultimate goal is to meet that deadline, but he conceded it’s not enforceable. Justice Goodwin Liu referred to the provision as aspirational and questioned how the state courts were supposed to reorganize the system to make it work. Attorney Christina Von der Ahe Rayburn challenged the measure approved in November, saying it made a promise to voters that is impossible to achieve.
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