Voters will have a chance on Nov. 6 in the general election to make a moral and financial stand on a highly controversial issue: repeal of California’s death penalty.
The initiative qualified on April 23 for the Nov. 6 ballot and is known as “The Savings, Accountability, and Full Enforcement for California Act,” or “The SAFE California ACT.”
The official proponent of the SAFE campaign is Jeanne Woodford, former undersecretary and director of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) and former warden of San Quentin State Prison, where she oversaw four executions.
The proposed law intends to address issues regarding the death penalty in California. Goals range from saving tax dollars on lengthy and financially cumbersome death penalty trials, eliminating of the risk of an innocent person being executed and redistributing funds towards solving and prosecuting rape and murder cases with the goal of making streets and families safer by putting more criminals off the streets and behinds bars.
In the last five years, five states have repealed the death penalty and California voters have a chance to not only make a moral and financial stand, but make California safer while setting an example for the country and perhaps world, that capital punishment is not the best way to deter crime or spend tax dollars.
According to a 2011 study by U.S. Ninth Circuit Judge Arthur L. Alarcon and Paula M. Mitchell, that was published in the Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review, since 1978, California has spent roughly $4 billion dollars on the death penalty system and has carried out only 13 executions.
In the study, Alarcon and Mitchell state that $1.7 billion of the $4 billion was spent on state and federal appeals. That’s equivalent to nearly $57 million a year that could have been used every year for the last 34 years to fund law enforcement and victims funds. And that’s just in appeal money. The number per year is an astronomical $117 million per year over the last 34 years when applying the entire $4 billion.
In addition, according to the Alarcon and Mitchel study, California’s 714 death row prisoners cost $184 million more per year than those sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Right-wing, left-wing, independent or Martian, one has to understand that changing the punishment for murderers from the death penalty to life in prison without the possibility of parole, would save outrageous amounts of money that could be used to solve, investigate, prosecute and lock up crimes and criminals that we otherwise wouldn’t have the money or resources for.
Death penalty proponents that I have spoken with have brought up one point that many people I have talked with agree worry about. It is the argument that people fear death more than anything and therefore the death penalty is the ultimate deterrent. Take away the death penalty and there goes the deterrent.
But in the last 34 years with the death penalty, murderers have not been deterred by fear of death. Murderers don’t make sound decisions when it comes to self-preservation or much else in life.
The idea of scores of criminals waiting to run amok, because now they can kill without fear of death penalty only life in prison, reminds me of chicken little running about calling out, “The sky is falling!”
When November arrives all voters should vote with their minds and not their first impulse. We all hate and despise murderers. But let’s vote to throw away the key, reallocate money spent on death penalty trials and appeals and dedicate our tax dollars and resources to the prevention, investigation, solving and prosecution of murders.