In my e-mail exchanges with Dorina Lisson, I called her opposition to the death penalty misguided. Here is how she responded to me:
$4 BILLION !!!
By Dorina Lisson
Are you aware of the following ??? Then tell me, who really is misguided ??? Maybe this is one huge conspiracy ???
In June 2011, a landmark report by Paula M. Mitchell, a professor at Loyola Law School, and Arthur L. Alarcón, a senior judge on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, unearthed new data that reveal just how bad the death penalty system is, in California alone. Other death penalty states are no better off.
Their report shows that since the current death penalty statute was enacted in 1978, taxpayers' have spent more than $4 billion on only 13 executions, or roughly $308 million per execution.
As of 2009, prosecuting death penalty cases cost upwards of $184 million more each year than life-without-parole cases. WAKE UP AMERICA !!!!!
Housing, health care, and legal representation for California’s current death-row population of 714, the largest in the country, account for $144 million in annual extra costs.
If juries continue to send an average of 20 convicts to San Quentin’s death row each year, and executions continue at the present rate, by 2030 the ranks of the condemned will have swelled to more than 1,000 and California’s taxpayers' will have spent $9 billion to execute a total of 23 inmates. How sane is this !!!
“I was stunned by the report,” said Loni Hancock, a Democratic state senator from Oakland and a member of the senate budget committee. Hancock had spent the previous five months agonizing over deep cuts to California’s general budget, and “it broke my heart,” she said. “That’s when I decided the time had come for Californians to reconsider the death penalty.”
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EDITOR’S COMMENTS:
Using California is a poor example. While the juries sentence vicious killers to death, the state’s left-wing judges continue to block executions. It is true that executions in other states are delayed by numerous appeals, they do not experience the radical approach taken by California’s judges in thwarting the will of the people.
I don’t know if Professor Mitchell and Judge Alarcón were death penalty opponents before they released their study, but if they were, there is a good chance the cost figures were inflated.
Because the death penalty does act as a deterrent to premeditated murders and does keep some burglars, robbers and rapists from killing their victims, it is still worth the cost that Dorina points to. As for State Senator Loni Hancock, what else would you expect from a legislator with a record of supporting left-wing causes?
1 comment:
The United States stands alone among democratic countries in its continued use of the death penalty. By retaining the death penalty in a world that has largely turned its back on this barbaric practice, the United States damages its reputation, causes friction with its closest neighbors and allies and undermines its efforts to promote human rights at home and abroad.
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