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Only 13 inmates have been executed in California in the past 34 years, at a cost of nearly $4 billion.
Wow! If that is true each of these 13 executions cost the state of California about $300 million. Which means that the death penalty in California in nothing more then a jobs program for the prosecutors, public defenders and judges that run the criminal injustice system. I am just reposting the article. While I agree with some of it, I don't agree with everything these socialists in the Bay Area are saying. Mercury News editorial: End capital punishment in California Mercury News Editorial Posted: 12/29/2011 08:00:00 PM PST The promised 2012 ballot proposition to repeal the death penalty and replace it with life in prison without the possibility of parole can't come soon enough to California. With another judge's ruling against the state this month, it's clear that the courts are increasingly frustrated with officials' fumbling to find a way to put condemned killers to death without violating the Constitution's guarantee against cruel and unusual punishment. And with each costly judicial proceeding, the reasons to end the death penalty grow exponentially. We have long opposed the death penalty on the principle that killing someone is not essential to public safety and places society in the same realm as the murderer. More recently, thanks to DNA evidence, the discovery of wrongful convictions of death row inmates across the country has soared -- now at 130 and counting, which leaves no doubt that innocent people have been killed by government in the past. Meanwhile, pursuing the death penalty saps money away from schools, health care and public safety. The latest judicial blow was struck by Marin County Superior Court Judge Fay D'Opal, who ruled that California failed to follow state administrative procedures in adopting a new lethal-injection procedure in 2010. This was soon after Supreme Court Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye, quoted by the Los Angeles Times, stated the obvious: The death penalty is "not effective." It has been six years since the last execution at San Quentin. Only 13 inmates have been executed in California in the past 34 years, at a cost of nearly $4 billion. D'Opal's ruling means California's death chamber likely won't be used again before 2013. Executions were put on hold in February 2006, a month after 76-year-old Clarence Ray Allen was killed by lethal injection. U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel stopped the execution of Michael Morales over allegations that the state's drug protocol caused excessive pain. Two states -- Washington and Ohio -- have switched to a single-drug method, but California continues to pursue a three-drug option. Meanwhile, evidence of the fiscal insanity of housing 720 inmates on San Quentin's death row -- double the number in Texas -- continues to mount. A 2008 report by the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice estimated the annual cost of the death penalty system to be $137 million a year. It put the cost of a system with a maximum penalty of lifetime incarceration at $11.5 million a year, an annual savings of about $125 million. The state could instead spend the money hiring 2,000 new teachers, or on police officers or crime prevention. But unless voters end this madness, California will spend millions of dollars to develop a new injection procedure and $400 million to build a new death row facility because San Quentin is overcrowded. Supporters of the initiative say they have collected more than 200,000 signatures. They need 504,000 by March 18 to qualify for the ballot. Californians traditionally have supported the death penalty. But a Field poll three months ago indicated that voters now would prefer to see murderers sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. California's capital punishment system is as impractical as it is immoral. It should be abolished. |