Prosecutor Floating Death Penalty for Nick Reiner Knows It’s an Empty Threat |
The headlines came fast and furious: Nick Reiner, 32, could face the death penalty for murdering his own parents, beloved Hollywood couple Rob Reiner and Michele Singer Reiner.
News coverage ranged from practical explainers on California’s death penalty to vulgar punditry casting more heat than light. True crime celebrity Nancy Grace fumed that Reiner showed “no remorse” during his brief courtroom appearance. Megyn Kelly mused, without shame or evidence, that Reiner might deploy the same “sympathy card” as the Menendez brothers, who, after killing their parents, accused their father of sexually abusing them as children.
If there was one thing most people seemed to agree on, however, it was that a death sentence is highly unlikely.
Reiner’s reported mental illness has already raised questions over his competency to stand trial. His lifelong struggle with addiction, which led to homelessness and more than a dozen stints in rehab, is the kind of mitigating evidence that could persuade a jury to show mercy — if not convince prosecutors to take death off the table altogether.
Then there’s the Reiner family, which has barely begun to grieve. The Reiners’ adult children — who have asked “for speculation to be tempered with compassion and humanity” — may likely push back against a decision to seek death, whether out of opposition to the death penalty, a desire to avoid the trauma and spectacle of a capital trial, or because they do not wish to lose another beloved family member to homicide, no matter how devastating his alleged actions.
So why did the Los Angeles County district attorney raise the possibility of a death sentence for Nick Reiner at a press conference just two days after his parents’ bodies were found?
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In a state that has not carried out an execution in 20 years, decisions to seek the death penalty amount to little more than political posturing. While nearly 600 people remain under a death sentence in the Golden State, a return to executions has never seemed more far-fetched. After Gov. Gavin Newsom imposed a moratorium in 2019, the death chamber at San Quentin was dismantled, and the condemned population transferred to prisons across the state.
While a new governor could conceivably lift the moratorium, any push to restart executions would take years. As one federal judge put it more than a decade ago, California’s death penalty remains a punishment “no rational jury or legislature could ever impose: life in prison, with the remote possibility of death.”
Yet there was District Attorney Nathan Hochman on December 16, standing somberly before the cameras in downtown LA to announce the charges that would make Reiner eligible for the ultimate punishment.
“No decision at this point has been made........