States across the country consider scrapping the ultimate punishment
By Stefanie Faucher, Program Director of Death Penalty Focus
In March, New Mexico took the historic step of replacing the death penalty with permanent imprisonment—making it the fifteenth state to abandon capital punishment and the second state to do so legislatively in the last two years.
New Jersey’s legislature passed a similar bill in December 2007. In signing the legislation, New Mexico’s Governor Bill Richardson cited the extraordinarily high costs of retaining the death penalty
At least 10 other states have considered similar measures this year, citing the significant savings that could result from ending the death penalty; Montana, Nebraska, Illinois, Colorado, New Hampshire, and Kansas are among them. Just weeks ago, Connecticut’s legislature passed a bill to abolish the death penalty, although Governor Jodi Rell has stated that she is likely to veto.
Also this year, Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley called on his state’s legislature to end the death penalty citing both financial and ethical concerns. In response, the Maryland legislature passed a bill making it extremely difficult to seek the death penalty—stopping just short of outright abolition. Governor O’Malley praised the legislation and indicated that it was a step in the right direction.
In June 2008, the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice found that California annually spends approximately $137.7 million dollars on the death penalty. By replacing the death penalty with permanent imprisonment, the Commission noted that the state could save in excess of $125 million per year. The California State Legislature also doled out an additional $136 million this year for a new death row housing facility—for which the total project budget is expected to reach $400 million.
Several California state legislators including Senator Mark Leno and Assemblyman Jared Huffman have called for an end to the death penalty. Both legislators have cited the state’s budget crisis as a good reason to consider getting rid of capital punishment. In a recent op-ed for the Marin Independent Journal, State Senator Leno argued, "We are cutting the very programs that help reduce violent crime, and without them, violent crime may well increase. Meanwhile, we continue to waste more than $250 million on an ineffective and broken death penalty, and it’s a price we can no longer afford. For Californians who want to live in safe and healthy communities, the answer is clear. The time has come to replace the death penalty with permanent imprisonment."
In a March interview with Marin Magazine, Assemblyman Huffman came to a similar conclusion, "It’s time to seriously reconsider the death penalty—it makes no sense from any angle you approach it. It’s hard to make the case it deters anyone from crime. It’s even harder to make the case we can afford it. In so many ways, it is absolutely ridiculous."
Recent polling shows that California voters are likely to agree with them.
The State of California could save $1 billion in five years by converting the sentences of the nearly 680 persons currently on death row to sentences of life without the possibility of parole, and by suspending all new death sentences for a period of five years. This would also allow the legislature to consider selling the prime real estate currently occupied by San Quentin State Prison for an estimated $2 billion dollars—a goal that has united some Democrats and Republicans, including Senator Jeff Denham from Merced.
This country’s fiscal crisis has made one thing certain; the death penalty’s days are numbered. When that happens, the US will finally join the vast majority of countries—135 and counting—that have abandoned capital punishment. For opponents of the death penalty, that day can’t come soon enough.
For more information, please visit
www.deathpenalty.org.
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