Patt Morrison Asks: Donald Heller, death-penalty advocate no
more  Donald Heller is partly responsible for turning
California's death row into the most populous and expensive in
the nation. So why'd the lawyer known as "Mad Dog" change his
mind?  Don Heller wrote the 1978 initiative restoring capital
punishment and is now trying to get Californians to ban it.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)   'Remanded" -- taken into
custody. In his career as a New York prosecutor and a federal
prosecutor in California, Donald Heller has asked the court to
remand guilty defendants countless times. He helped put away
Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme, who tried to assassinate President
Gerald Ford, and a big-time heroin dealer, a man Heller believed
destroyed many lives. At the dealer's sentencing hearing, the
prosecutor remarked that were the death penalty an option, he
would volunteer to "throw the switch." After that, a law clerk
called him "Mad Dog," and the nickname stuck. Heller left the
U.S. attorney's office in 1977 -- th