http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2...rs-to-consider-ending-capital-punishment?lite California voters to consider ending capital punishment By Isolde Raftery, msnbc.com California voters will decide whether to abolish the death penalty this November, the San Jose Mercury News reported. A group in favor of doing away with the nation’s largest death row gathered more than 800,000 signatures –- enough to put capital punishment on the ballot. Death would be replaced with life in prison without possibility of parole, according to the Mercury News. Inmates currently on death row would live out life in prison instead. "It's a proposition whose time has come," measure proponent Jeanne Woodford, a former San Quentin State Prison warden, told reporters Monday morning, according to the Mercury News. Abolishing the death penalty could save California tens of millions of dollars, which could be redirected to solving rape and murder cases, Woodford said. Woodford, who oversaw four executions as warden, now heads Death Penalty Focus, which opposes the death penalty. The measure is supported by the American Civil Liberties Union and some law enforcement and victims rights groups, the Sacramento Bee reported. The death penalty was reinstated in California in 1978. Since then, 13 people have been executed, according to Death Penalty Focus. The Los Angeles Times reported that $4 billion has been spent to administer capital punishment –- about $308 million per execution. California has been moving in this direction for several years. In 2006, a U.S. District Court judge halted all executions out of concern that they resulted in unnecessary pain, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. In December, a Superior Court judge rejected the state’s new lethal injection protocols because officials hadn’t considered a one-drug method used in other states.
Good news, in my opinion. Now we get to see if it can pass. If one innocent person is killed by the state, that is one too many.
I am not philosophically opposed to the death penalty, but I sure as hell am opposed to the way it is carried out in this country and I doubt if you could create a system that would be fair and impartial.
Finally it's on the ballot. I hope to see it done away with in my lifetime. Capital punishment is racist, classist, and arbitrary, costs billions of taxpayer money, and doesn't deter violent crime. Vengeance is not good enough.
Cali's too big for this to pass. Get ready for some horrific campaign ads, probably dealing with kid and female victims more than anything. Why even focus on death row inmates, just get the nastiest most brutal kid and rape/murder crimes and plaster them on TV and the radio.
I think killing somebody for their heinous crime is probably alot cheaper than housing them with 3 meals a day with electricity+water+clothes for 60 years. Just saying. Against capital punishment but let's be objective
Throw in the skyrocketing medical costs, when they become senior citizens. The giant sucking sound is the California politicians taking more money away from law abiding citizens for free retirement homes of child molesters and killers.
Never considered this a great rebuttal as death penalty supporters would probably do away with these if they could.
Lookup the story of dewey bozella and there are many men like him. As long as there are cases like his we can't have the death penalty.
It doesn't. The trial costs involving capital punishment are higher, keeping the inmates in higher security prisons is costlier, and burning through appeals typically last 20+ years. I forgot the exact number (google), but it's either 2-3 times more expensive than a lifer when it's all said and done. If you're screwed in the initial trial, such as being poor, unlucky, different color, crap defender who doesn't know how to plea bargain, overzealous prosecutor and/or judge, then the odds become progressively harder for you to appeal and get out. After conviction, the presumption of innocence falls upon the defense despite if new evidence comes out or subsequent discoveries of bias or tampering during the initial trial. The system is messed up. It's unequal, and it doesn't work.
from the LA Times article cited above: http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jun/20/local/la-me-adv-death-penalty-costs-20110620
So it was 20 times and not 2-3 times more expensive. I also forgot execution costs that came as a consequence of interpreting "cruel and unusual" over time.
