SAN FRANCISCO (KRON) -- The father of murder victim Polly Klaas says he wouldn't be surprised if the man convicted of murdering his daughter outlives him despite today's California Supreme Court decision affirming the death penalty for Richard Allen Davis.

"I had no doubts the death penalty would be upheld," Mark Klaas told KRON 4's Mark Danon and Darya Folsom live on the KRON 4 Morning News.  "I believe that this is a process that will continue for decades to come and it's really nothing more than a delaying process by the defense bar and the anti-death penalty lobby in this country."

The court considered Davis' conviction on murder, burglary, robbery, kidnapping, and a lewd act with a child.

"We affirm the judgment in its entirety," the court wrote in its opinion.

"It's a scam," Mark Klaas added.  "The whole idea is that you need specially trained lawyers to do death penalty appeals and then they need a long time to put together their arguments.  The best they could come up with after 13 years was a very weak argument on Miranda rights.  So they'll just recycle that process again.  There is a streamlining of the federal process.  I believe all of the Habius Corpus arguments have to be heard in one brief but then it runs back to the state and it can be repeated time after time after time to the point where we now have about 650 people on death row in California and we've executed only 13 of them over the last 30 years."

It's now been nearly 16 years since Davis kidnapped Polly Klaas at knifepoint from her Petaluma home during a slumber party.  Davis led authorities to her body two months later.

Mark Klaas says he isn't obsessed with Davis' long appeals.

"There are so many important things we can do to protect children and to prevent crime that I don't want to spend too much time dealing with this thing out of the past, this creature that keeps rearing its ugly head, and I think this is important, re-victimizing myself and my family," Klaas said.

Despite the ruling, Klaas doesn't expect Davis to be executed anytime soon.

"He gets constitutionally guaranteed health care. He gets a roof over his head and three meals a day all paid for by us the taxpayers.  I have to go out and find my own health care.  I have to take care of all of my own needs so the possibility is very real that he will outlive me, you, and the rest of us," Klaas said.
 
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