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Not Cruel and Unusual, but Costly, Punishment
· Sunday, July 17, 2011
Democratic California state Sen. Loni Hancock is pushing legislation to end California's death penalty. "Capital punishment is an expensive failure and an example of the dysfunction of our prisons," she explained in a statement. "California's death row is the largest and most costly in the United States. It is not helping to protect our state; it is helping to bankrupt us."
You have to hand this to death penalty opponents: For decades, capital punishment opponents have tried to thwart California's 1978 death penalty law with frivolous appeals that clog courts, delay punishment and burn through taxpayers' dollars. They now have been so successful that they can argue that California's death penalty doesn't work and costs too much.
Hancock is right about the dysfunction. Since 1978, California has executed 13 inmates, even though juries have sent close to 800 inmates to death row. California's lethal-injection protocol has been on hold since February 2006, when U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel stayed the execution of convicted rapist/murderer Michael Morales, lest Morales suffer any pain.
Death row inmates are likelier to kill themselves than they are to be executed. A new report published in the Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review notes that 78 inmates died on death row from natural causes or violence.
The report also lays out the costs of the death penalty. If you take the $4 billion it estimates that state and federal taxpayers have paid since 1978 to administer California's death penalty and then divide that number by 13, you find that each execution cost $308 million on average. The report estimates that the death penalty cost Californians $184 million in 2009.
In response to the report, Hancock put together SB 490, which would replace the death penalty with a sentence of life without parole. Hancock spokesman Larry Levin explained that the death penalty has been a "third rail" of California politics, but with the report's new numbers on the law's price tag, "we saw a moment."
One of the report's co-authors, Loyola law professor Paula M. Mitchell, told the Los Angeles Times she wants to abolish the death penalty. The other, Judge Arthur L. Alarcon, was on the three-judge panel that denied the appeal of Robert Alton Harris, who killed two 16-year-old boys before his 1992 execution.
On the one hand, the report does a solid job quantifying how much taxpayers must pay for the death penalty. Mitchell and Alarcon even found numbers that estimate defense costs for inmate appeals -- an average of $635,000 on federal appeals alone.
On the other hand, the authors gloss over the role of frivolous appeals and bonehead rulings by federal judges. The report states that federal courts granted new trials or penalty hearings in roughly 70 of 100 now-disposed cases. That means federal judges have overturned juries in cases reviewed by state courts in 7 in 10 cases.
Kent Scheidegger of the tough-on-crime Criminal Justice Legal Foundation puts the onus on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, where too many judges are "simply looking for a reason to reverse."
When I asked Hancock whether the 9th Circuit's 70 percent reversal rate bothers her, she answered, "No, not if they're following the law."
And: "Thank God we have a constitution. We're not one of those countries where they cut off hands and execute people without due process."
Don Heller wrote California's 1978 death penalty ballot measure. He now opposes capital punishment. A former prosecutor, he told me that he "evolved" in private practice after dealing more closely with defendants and seeing too many "pretty inept" lawyers representing capital cases. He concluded, "We're just spending way too much money for a system that has flaws in it."
In a letter to Hancock, Scheidegger hit the report for leaving out the savings of the "plea bargain effect," i.e., when murderers plead guilty -- forfeiting the chance they might be found not guilty at trial -- in order to avoid capital punishment. "What would happen to those cases if there were no death penalty?"
And what happens when California's death row lawyers discover they've got time on their hands and a receptive audience in the 9th Circuit? Next argument: Life without parole is too expensive.
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Mr.Bones.
The answer is simple!All that's needed is a few minor changes to the names "Death Penalty and Death Row"So our sensitive folks could feel better.They could call it a very,very,late term abortion.Death-Row could be called. After-Life-Row.Doing so would take that nasty stigma of putting to death all those poor abused violent murderers.And the longest anybody would spend on "After Life Row" would be nine months. Doing this would save the taxpayers of California hundreds of millions of pesos.And as having late term abortions ain't a big thing.All the folks with, Not Killing Covicted Murderer Syndrome could rest easy at night.Knowing they saved the wonton slaughter of in-human life! Semper Paratus.
Posted July 17, 2011 at 6:04:38 AM
veritaseequitas
I like your answer Mr. Bones - "They could call it a very, very late term abortion."
Its actually the lawyers who are driving up the cost of putting murderers to death with their endless appeals. The appeal process should be swift and limited on any death penalty case.
People in our country see absolutely nothing wrong with aborting innocent pre-born babies and yet they weep and moan over putting vicious killers to death? What a bunch of candy a$$ weasels. Our values and our justice system has run amok when we cannot make the distinction between ending the life of a murdering monster and legally killing the innocent pre-born.
Posted July 17, 2011 at 7:04:40 AM
Doktor Riktor Von Zhades
Der Goot Doktor here has time again stated that he could agree to life without parole if said life sentence were to be spent in the Aleutians. No fence, no guards. Build it, supply it with food, shelter, and basics only. I am quite sure the prison population would be able to police itself, or cull the herd so to speak.
As for appeals, I am not without some compassion. You get one.
How about all those anti-death penalty folks be made to pony up some bucks to defend the convicted dirtbags, instead of relying on the taxpayer's dime? Or perhaps the state can ORDER high priced law firms to represent these folks who have given up any claim to humanity by their horrendous actions and do it pro-bono. This way they can receive the best defense possible. No need for a public defender to appeal.
IF such were to become the case it would not surprise me to find the rate of endless appeals dropping like a stone in water.
Posted July 17, 2011 at 9:21:37 AM
Howard Last
Lets go back to what was used when the Constitution and Bill of Rights were adopted, public hangings. If this is not done we need vigilante justice. It worked with Tom Horn and others here in Wyoming. Maybe it is about time these a##hole judges need to be removed or how about Tar and Feather. We need the anti-crime program Thomas Jefferson proposed when he was governor of Virgina. If you were convicted of murder on Tuesday, you were hung on Wednesday. The only exception if you were convicted on Saturday, they waited until Monday to hang you.
Posted July 17, 2011 at 11:33:49 AM
Frank E.
07/17/11
For those who are convicted of murder.Live in
Alaska's PRISON SYSTEM.NO PAROLE,MAKE LIFE
MISERABLE FOR THEM TIL THEY DIE.WITH THESE RULES
THERE ARE NO CHANCES FOR A SECOND KILLING!
Posted July 17, 2011 at 4:18:30 PM
Army Officer
I find myself in the uncomfortable position of disagreeing (to a degree) with my fellow conservatives and agreeing (to an even more limited degree) with California liberals.
I have nothing against the death penalty being applied to people who commit murder, or even a series of other crimes. What I DO object to is giving an irrevocable sentence to people whose guilt is not sure. The list of people whose convictions were correctly overturned should give ANYONE cause to be very, Very, VERY circumspect about giving life-and-death decisions to our present legal system.
Sorry, I just personally know too many crooked cops and lawyers. My reticence is practical, not philosophical.
Alan Newton was released from prison after serving 22 YEARS for a false rape conviction in New York state. Alan Northrup spent 17 YEARS in prison for a rape he didn't commit, and upon his release not only was he not given ANYTHING, but the state of Washington is presently garnishing his wages because of a six-figure child support "obligation" he owes, precisely because he spent the last 17 years in a cage unable to earn anything.
Are you SERIOUS? THESE are the people who get to decide who dies?
As I said, I'm okay with the death penalty when it is proven, but the standard of proof has got to be VERY, VERY, VERY high - and remember, "testilying" is so widespread it has a name, prosecutors and judges are lawyers (the 99% of them that are scumbags give the other 1% a bad reputation), and the average American of jury-serving age voted for Obama, or didn't vote at all.
Posted July 17, 2011 at 9:07:06 PM
Ted R. Weiland
"Ronald L. Dart and Philip G. Kayser, respectively, provide the following compelling statistics:
'I saw a statistic recently that underlined the problem. Of all the men currently in prison … how many of these men had been tried and convicted of murder, had been released, and then had killed again? The number ran to more than eight hundred, including five prison guards. Five of these killers had not been released, but had killed prison guards. Whatever our academic arguments about deterrence and the death penalty, here is something we have to deal with. There are eight hundred citizens and five prison guards who would still be alive today if these killers had been quickly dispatched." (Ronald L. Dart, "Capital Punishment: A Christian Dilemma")
'…from the time that the death penalty was once again legal in America (1977) to February of 2007 there have only been 1137 executions. Yet the period of time has had well over half a million murders.' (Phillip G. Kayser, "Is the Death Penalty Just")
Excerpted from "Amendment 8: Bail, Fines, & Cruel and Unusual Punishments" at http://www.missiontoisrael.org/biblelaw-constitutionalism-pt17.php#endnote42.
Posted July 18, 2011 at 1:55:58 PM
Cost !?! Think about it!
The above article has a couple of references to cost in it - how much it is to keep a person on "Death Row." This figure must account for all their appeals, too. Well, the last time I was in The Home Depot, 7/8" hemp rope was $1.15 a foot. Seems obvious to me! Give them one(1) appeal to the Supreme Court, and if the result is negative or the Court refuses to hear the case, then a long drop at the end of a short rope is in order! ASAP!
I'm tired of supporting scumbags who have/had no respect for the Law or other people and went ahead and commited a Capital offense just 'cause!
Posted July 18, 2011 at 2:06:05 PM
Ol'Joe
I am almost in accord with ARMY OFFICER. In this insane age of unreason, there are just too many misguided, dishonest and amoral people in government, the legal profession, and law enforcement for them to dominate the decision in the life sentence or death penalty issue. Should a better time return when sound legal judgement, law and high morals govern such decisions, then I will unequivocally support the death penalty.
Posted July 18, 2011 at 4:46:41 PM