CALIFORNIA, USA — Twenty-nine years ago feels like a lifetime to Milena Phillips, but it also feels like just yesterday since her 9-year-old son Jonathan Sellers and his 13-year-old friend Charlie Keever were brutally raped and murdered.
“I still hear his voice talking to me, calling me mom,” she said.
“It doesn't feel like it's been 30 years since I've seen him, since I've kissed him, since I held him," Phillips said. "Because he's so much a part of me, so much in my heart.”
For 29 years, she said her son’s convicted serial rapist and killer feared death row more than death itself.
“He did not want to go to death row, though he himself administered death to so many people,” she said.
What she said is a deterrent to many criminals, the isolation on death row, is what the California District Attorneys Association Chief Executive Officer Greg Totten said is seen as a privilege in the eyes of the state.
“There are a variety of privileges and procedures that are in place there that are costly to administer for prison officials," Totten said, adding that convicts have their own cells and are able to get communications and information. "And this simply implemented practice of moving them into general inmate population.”
He said this is more of an administrative decision on housing, not a policy one.
At a press conference on Monday, Governor Gavin Newsom reiterated that he is against the death penalty, and that transferring inmates to general prisons will help them work and pay back restitution to victims’ families.
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The restitution is part of Proposition 66, a law that voters approved in 2016 to make sure the death penalty stayed in place with reforms.
“They're not gonna make money to give real restitution," Phillips said., "So it's it's a joke. I just can't even imagine.”
Phillips says this is not her fight anymore. Her son’s killer died from COVID in 2020. She said she understands there are innocent people on death row and there are racial inequalities, but she said ,for someone like her son’s killer where the evidence was clear as day, death row should remain.
Billie Mizell is the executive director of Acting with Compassion & Truth. She works inside San Quentin and said that if death row were really a deterrent, there would be no more murder.
"If death row is proven not to act as a deterrent, then what is the purpose of denying people sentenced to death opportunities to serve victims — Prop 66 allows people on death row to serve victims both by earning money through jobs for victim restitution and by learning how to feel and express remorse and accountability? These are both proven to serve victims and aid in their healing. Why should victims who want this healing be denied it?" Mizell said.
feels like just yesterday since her 9-year-old son Jonathan Sellers and his 13-year-old friend Charlie Keever were brutally raped and murdered.
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