Franklin Zimring quoted in Associated Press, June 29, 2012

Franklin Zimring, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who specializes in criminal sanctions, said a sentence up to 21 years in prison seemed overly long in Marin’s case. “What makes the potential sentence both seem quite long and seem, in some sense, inappropriate is that the life that was put at risk was that of the offender,” he said.

Franklin Zimring quoted in The New York Times, June 28, 2012

In an interview Wednesday, Mr. Zimring said his research found that the 80 percent decrease in those four crimes reported by the department from 1990 to 2009 was “real.” He said that there was always “some underreporting, and there is some downgrading in every police force that I know of,” but that his research showed that any manipulation was too minuscule to significantly affect the department’s crime statistics.

Franklin Zimring cited in Oakland Tribune, June 26, 2012

Police commissions vary greatly in terms of power and usefulness, said Frank Zimring…. “There are not a lot of straight lines in the governance of Oakland police at this point,” he said. “It’s unclear to me that a commission structure would be a way of straightening things out instead of tying another knot in what is already a pretty convoluted process.”

Franklin Zimring quoted in The Huffington Post Crime Blog, June 11, 2012

Franklin E. Zimring … co-authored the chapter with David T. Johnson…. The professors discussed “four latent impacts of attempts to revive and rationalize the death penalty in the United States.” Their work explained that an enduring legacy of the American resurgence of capital punishment was that it helped to take the focus off of other areas of the criminal justice system, and in the process, eviscerated protections against governmental excess.

Franklin Zimring quoted in The Daily Beast, June 9, 2012

“If aggressive policing is enormously costly, it’s a double-edged sword, because the evidence is pretty clear it’s been beneficial” at bringing the crime rate down, said Franklin E. Zimring, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley Law School and author of The City That Became Safe: New York’s Lessons for Urban Crime And Its Control.

Franklin Zimring quoted in Times-Standard, May 24, 2012

Part of the problem, Zimring said, is the victim-offender distinction is blurred in this case because it was a single-vehicle accident…. “You could just as easily charge the driver with attempted suicide,” Zimring said. “If there’s malice here, there’s also malice unto himself.”

Franklin Zimring writes for San Francisco Chronicle, April 29, 2012

Without moral leadership from respected California politicians, this initiative probably is doomed. Prosecutors embrace a California death penalty, not because they like or expect executions, but because it enhances their plea-bargaining power and provides them with a starring role in the high-stakes public drama of a capital trial.

Franklin Zimring quoted in San Francisco Chronicle, The Opinion Shop, April 27, 2012

Franklin E. Zimring … writes that no state or nation ended state execution because of a popular vote, and predicts the initiative will fail. Only when political leaders take up the cause to end a policy that both opponents and proponents agree is not working, will California end its 34-year death penalty, he says.

Franklin Zimring interviewed on KPCC-FM, AirTalk, April 24, 2012

“The numbers are tremendous for a very simple reason, lawyers are more expensive than prison guards, even in California,” said Berkeley Law Professor Frank Zimring. “If you take the 13 people California has executed and the $4 billion that the system has cost since 1978… that’s $317 million an execution. “

Franklin Zimring quoted in Los Angeles Times, April 22, 2012

“This seems to me much closer to a political game of Trivial Pursuit in which the district attorney simply makes up rationales … which can’t be evaluated, and relies on the fact that the targets of the legislation are unpopular,” said Frank Zimring.