Should We End The Death Penalty In California?

Nov. 14, 2011 - PRLog -- Presently advocates for an end to the death penalty are gathering signatures on a petition to place an initiative on California’s November 2012 ballot. That initiative would ask the voters of California whether or not the death penalty should be abolished in our state.

The initiative is listed as initiative 1512 on the Secretary of State’s web page. So, California voters may get to vote on the issue next year.  If the voters approved the initiative, California’s death sentence would be changed to life in prison without possibility of parole. The initiative also says that those already on death row would have their death sentences changed to life in prison, without parole.

To qualify the initiative for the November ballot, signature gatherers must get 504,760 valid signatures on the petitions by no later than March 19, 2012.

For years, opinion polls have found that most people want to keep the death sentence. However, a Field Poll, taken in September of this year, found that 48% of those polled  say that someone convicted of first-degree murder should be sentenced to life without parole rather than execution. Only 40% preferred to keep the death penalty.

So, should we support this initiative?

With respect, I believe the death penalty should be repealed. Here is why.

The Innocence Project reports that there have been at least 278 post conviction DNA  exonerations in this country. In other words, often long after someone has been sentenced for a crime, DNA testing demonstrated that they actually did not commit that crime. Once this was demonstrated, and assuming they had not already been executed for a capital offense, they were released from prison. (Just 17of those exonerated by DNA tests had been sentenced to death.)

According to the Innocence Project, since the first reversal of a sentence occurred in1989, exonerations have been won in 35 states. Just since the year 2,000, 211 prisoners had been exonerated. These data make it clear that our criminal justice system is deeply flawed.

The ability to use DNA testing to prove innocence has only lately become available. But, death sentences have been reversed, based on other kinds of evidence, before DNA testing was available. According to the Innocence Project, over 130 inmates have been released from death row with DNA or other kinds of evidence of their innocence.

When people have been wrongly convicted, and sent to prison, we can at least release them and, perhaps, give them some compensation for their wrongful imprisonment. When someone has been wrongly executed, there is no way of undoing the execution.

Ad then, there is the issue of race. According to the Innocence Project, a large percentage of those exonerated are African Americans. Of the 278 prisoners exonerated by DNA evidence, 171 of them were Black. That is far above the percentage of African Americans in the general population. Somehow our criminal justice system is getting it wrong more often with accused African Americans than with other populations. Whenever a Black person is unjustly put to death, there is no way to make it right.

Are crimes punished by death lower in states that have capital punishment? Does the death penalty discourage capital crimes?

According to the Death Penalty Information Center it does not. Indeed, 10 of the 12 states without capital punishment have homicide rates below the national average. Federal Bureau of Investigation data shows, that half the states with the death penalty have homicide rates above the national average. In a state-by- state analysis, The New York Times found that, during the last 20 years, the homicide rate in states with the death penalty has been 48 percent to 101 percent higher than in states without the death penalty.

Then, finally there is the issue of cost.  According to a report compiled by Judge Arthur L. Alarcon, since  the voters of California reinstated the death penalty in 1978, the state has spent $4 billion to fund its death penalty system. In 2008 The California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice estimated the current death penalty system costs the state$137.7 million per year to administer. If the death penalty were replaced by lifetime in jail, the cost of managing the same inmates would be reduced to $11.5 million.

Why would there be such a cost savings? Our legal system recognizes that the death penalty takes those executed to a place of no return. That places an extra burden on the legal system to ensure that death row inmates are, in fact, guilty. To be as sure as possible, death row inmates are granted many hearings, appeals, and processes that are not normally available to other inmates. Those extra processes cost as lot of money.

I think the evidence clearly demonstrates that we should eliminate the death penalty. I hope you will sign the petition, if asked, and I hope you will vote to end the death penalty if the initiative gets on the ballot.

Boyce Hinman

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