In his Los Angelest Times Capitol Journal column, George Skelton writes from Sacramento, "Repeal the death penalty: Each execution costs taxpayers $308 million, a colossal waste."
Waste, fraud and abuse — also known as California's death penalty.
It's a colossal waste of money for arguably the state's most inefficient program.California has spent an estimated $4 billion to administer capital punishment over the past 33 years and executed only 13 people. That's about $308 million per execution.
It's a shameless fraud on the public. Californians have consistently supported the death penalty and been led to believe that it exists. It really doesn't.
We just stack up more and more killers on death row. There's now a backlog of 714.
It's an abuse of California resources — property and personnel, public and private.
And:
State Sen. Loni Hancock (D-Berkeley) is pushing a bill to abolish the death penalty and substitute life in prison without parole.
The measure would go to the ballot if it passed the Legislature, which seems doubtful.
Too many politicians are afraid of being judged soft on crime.
"Would people rather have teachers in the classrooms, police on the street or death penalty lawyers in court?" she asks.
Hancock and her bill make sense.
California doesn't punish depraved killers. It punishes the innocent: school kids, university students, the elderly poor, the taxpayers.
"Slow-motion death penalty," is the title of a Stockton Record editorial.
Since being reinstated in 1978, the death penalty has resulted in 14 executions (one of them in Missouri), the first coming in 1992, 14 years after the penalty was reinstated, and the last in January 2006.
In that same period, 78 death row inmates have died, 18 by suicide but most from natural causes. Today there are 714 condemned inmates, far more than the 513 men and women California has executed since 1893. We can accomplish the same slow-motion death by putting these people in the general prison population.
Since 1978, the state has spent about $4 billion sustaining the system. That's enough money to pay 5,000 police officers $60,000 a year for more than 13 years.
What's this all mean? It means the system is broken and there is no evidence it can or will be fixed. One thing is sure: The cost of keeping it in place will only increase in the years ahead.
It is that wasteful spending that is at the heart of moves to ask state voters to again consider this punishment. The simple question: Can its cost be justified?
Not according a growing number of studies and people, including attorney Don Heller, the former prosecutor who authored the state's 1978 death penalty law.
"I fervently believe that capital punishment should be abolished," Heller said.
"It's costing the state a huge amount of money."
The July 14th issue of the Economist carries the report, "California's criminal law; So bad, it could get better. Reformers are beginning to tackle the worst and most foolish parts."
Most famous of these was the 1994 ballot measure called “three strikes and you’re out”. Sponsored by the prison-guards union, it requires criminals convicted a second time to get double the usual sentence, while those with a third “strike” must get 25 years to life. Other states copied California, but California’s version is still the harshest, allowing even a non-violent or trivial third strike to result in a life term. In another six ballot measures between 1978 and 2000, voters also reintroduced and expanded the death penalty.
Three strikes has indeed, as advertised, removed some dangerous “career criminals” from the streets. But it has also condemned people to life for stealing a pair of socks. As these lifers age in prison, they not only mock justice but cost taxpayers ever more money. As for death sentences, it turns out that they exist more in theory than in practice. California does have the country’s largest death row, with 714 inmates. But it has executed only 13 people since 1978, whereas 1,242 have been executed in America as a whole. On California’s death row, 78 inmates have instead died of old age, disease or suicide. The process of appeal typically takes decades.
It is also tough on taxpayers. California’s death row has cost more than $4 billion since 1978, according to a new study by a federal appeals judge who has also been a state prosecutor in death-penalty cases. And it will cost more in years to come. This makes no sense at a time when California is cutting funding for its court system to balance ever tighter budgets.
Voters still favour the death penalty in principle, polls say. But growing numbers of credible critics are turning against it. These include Don Heller, the man who wrote the 1978 ballot measure reintroducing capital punishment, and Jeanne Woodford, once an administrator of death row. Both now want to repeal the penalty and convert death sentences to life terms without parole. A law to this effect is in the legislature, and could be on the ballot next year.
Jillian Rayfield posts, "CA Ballot Measure Would Let Voters Abolish The Death Penalty," Talking Points Memo.
The death penalty in California could be on its last legs.
A bill that passed out of committee in California's Assembly last week would create a ballot measure in the next statewide election that asks voters to decide whether to end the death penalty.
Earlier coverage of the cost of California's death penalty and SB 490 begins at the link. Related posts are in the cost index.
The Alarcon-Mitchell article, "Executing the Will of the Voters: A Roadmap to Mend or End the California Legislature's Multi-Billion-Dollar Death Penalty Debacle," is now live at the Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review website.
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