 |
San Quentin Execution Chamber
and Witness Room |
In November, California voters will consider Proposition 34, the latest of three bids over the past 40 years to overturn the death penalty. The argument this time is less on the morals of the punishment, as in the past, but more keyed to the millions of dollars in court and prison costs the state would save by sentencing Death Row killers to life behind bars instead.
Backers of Prop. 34, which would replace capital punishment with a sentence of life without the possibility of parole, say death penalty trials and appeals have become so tangled and mired they drain the state of $184 million a year in legal costs. Changing to life sentences would slash that tab to just $11.5 million, they say.
The state would also save $65 million a year in prison expenditures, proponents say, because each Death Row inmate costs $90,000 in extra security and services. And under the ballot measure, $100 million, presumably saved by the sentence switch, would be set aside for investigating rapes and murders.
"Money wasted on the death penalty could be put to so much better use," said Jeanne Woodford, a former warden at San Quentin who gave the final order to execute four condemned prisoners on her watch. "You would also run no chance of executing an innocent person. It's just the right thing to do."
Woodford, who also served as director of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, is now the lead proponent of Prop. 34 and head of Death Penalty Focus, the antiexecution organization in San Francisco.
Her money arguments resonate with her opponents, but that's where the agreement ends.
Source: SFGate, Sept. 2, 2012
