A California attorney will face a legal barrage to seek the death sentence against a suspect in the 1973 murder

February 21, 2019, 19:59 GMT

By David K. Li

California attorneys said they were facing the death penalty for the man accused of strangling an 11-year-old girl in 1973 – but legal experts insisted on Thursday that this is not the case. was not possible.

James Alan Neal, 72, has been charged with murder for the murder of Linda O'Keefe, an elementary school student in Newport Beach and Orange County Attorney Todd Spitzer, at a news conference. asserting that the death penalty was an option.

But when O & # 39; Keefe disappeared on his way home from school on July 6, 1973, and was found dead the next day, there was no capital punishment in California.

"I'm sure you can not impose a heavier penalty for a crime than the one that existed at the time," said Steve Cron, a senior criminal defense lawyer in Los Angeles. "That's what the ban on ex post facto the laws are all about. "

The Supreme Court of California, in February 1972, stated that capital punishment amounted to cruel and unusual punishment. State legislators re-enacted the death penalty law in 1977, before voters reaffirmed the death penalty at the polls in 1978.

California resumed executions in 1992. The state now executes prisoners by lethal injection.

"If the crime was committed five years later, I'm sure DA Spitzer would seek the death penalty," said Leif Dautch, vice chair of the California Lawyers Association's Criminal Law Steering Committee.

"Under a California Supreme Court law, District Attorney Spitzer does not have the right to seek the death penalty for a crime committed at a time when California had no valid death penalty. " he said.

Nevertheless, at the press conference announcing the arrest of Neal on Wednesday, Spitzer insisted that the death penalty is possible.

"And death can be a consideration in this case, as a prosecutor we have a process in place that allows us to consider death and I will follow that process," he said. "I will decide if death is appropriate in this case."

Neal, arrested Tuesday morning in Colorado, made a brief appearance Thursday in a courthouse in El Paso County. He is detained without bail and ordered to return to court on February 28 to determine whether he would be extradited to California.

One of the two surviving sisters of O & # 39; Keefe said that she had forgiven the alleged killer for a long time.

"It's the extra closure for me, it's that a person was arrested, but I forgave that person a long time ago, because forgiving me is like taking poison and wanting that other person dies, "said KBC, affiliated with NBC Tucson, the subsidiary on Wednesday.

"It's not a monster for me. It's a man who made a bad decision that affected my family, and I believe in justice and it's not for me to decide what it looks like, "she said.