According to CEDP, "Abolition will not come from the desks of local politicians or the power brokers in Washington, whose lives have likely never been touched by the death penalty and whose careers have often been bolstered by it.
[2] Its national board includes Yusuf Salaam, one of the since-exonerated Central Park 5, whose death was publicly urged by Donald Trump in 1989.
[4] CEDP gained prominence in attempting to save Stan "Tookie" Williams, who was executed in California on December 13, 2005, after being denied clemency by governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Previously, the CEDP was heavily involved in defending Kevin Cooper, a California inmate who was granted a new trial on the day he was scheduled to be executed, as well as Chicago's Death Row 10, death row inmates who the CEDP claims were sentenced on the basis of confessions extracted by police torture.
In 2016 CEDP surveyed death row inmates on their views of two California ballot measures, Propositions 62 and 66.