ReasonTV

Killing California's Costly Death Penalty Is the death penalty too expensive and ineffective to keep? This November, California voters will have the chance to decide on that question by voting for or against a ballot initiative called SAFE (Savings Accountability Full Enforcement), which would replace the death penalty with life without possibility of parole as the state's maximum punishment. Putting the moral issues of the death penatly aside, SAFE proponents argue that California's death penalty is costly to taxpayers and broken beyond repair. "Over the last 32 years its cost California tax payers about 4 billion dollars to have the death penalty, and over that period only 13 executions have been carried out," says LMU Law Professor Paula Mitchell. Mitchell's study, "Rethinking the Death Penalty in California," shows that once the death penalty comes into play for a case, the legal costs skyrocket to an extra $134 million dollars per year, well above the cost to implement life without possibility of parole. Death penalty cases require more attorneys, more experts, and an automatic review by the California Supreme Court, making it a seemingly endless process. "The average time on death row is now approaching 30 years," says former San Quentin Death Row Warden Jeanne Woodford. "So we have more inmates on death row who have died by natural causes or by suicide." Opponents of SAFE, such as Legal Director of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation Kent Scheidegger, say California simply needs to streamline its system ... From: ReasonTV Views: 8180 150 ratings Time: 06:57 More in News & Politics