California: Death penalty foes launch initiative drive

Lethal Injection Facility (exterior)
at San Quentin's prison

Capital punishment opponents launched a drive Tuesday to place an initiative on the November 2012 ballot to replace the death penalty in California with a sentence of life in prison without possibility of parole.

Organizers must collect 504,000 valid voter signatures by the March 18 deadline to qualify the initiative for the election. They've dubbed their measure the Savings, Accountability and Full Enforcement for California Act.

"Californians are ready for the SAFE California Act because now they realize we have wasted literally billions of dollars on a failed death penalty system," said Natasha Minsker, statewide campaign manager for the effort. "It's time to take our resources and put them instead toward public safety."

Minsker, an attorney in the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California who has long specialized in opposing executions, said the campaign has 800 volunteers and expects to have 2,000 by March. She estimated the campaign to qualify for the ballot will cost as much as $1.5 million, "and we have some great donors."

The drive was announced at a news conference on the steps of San Francisco City Hall.

California has not executed anyone since January 2006, shortly before a federal judge halted enforcement of the death penalty because of the possibility that flawed procedures were inflicting agonizing deaths on condemned prisoners. The state is still trying to satisfy the court's concerns.

A Field Poll released last month showed that 68 percent of California voters surveyed favored keeping the death penalty. But for the 1st time since the poll began asking the question 11 years ago, more voters - 48 % - said they would prefer that someone convicted of 1st-degree murder serve life without the possibility of parole. 40 % preferred the death penalty.

Proponents who spoke at Tuesday's event included 2 women who lost relatives to homicide. Others supporting the measure include retired or active law enforcement officials, including San Francisco Sheriff Michael Hennessey.

They pointed to a study by a federal judge and a law professor, released in June, showing California has spent $4 billion on the death penalty since the Legislature restored it in 1977. That works out to $308 million for each of the 13 executions carried out since then.

Abolishing the death penalty, they said, would save the state $1 billion in 5 years.

Source: San Francisco Chronicle, October 26, 2011

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