22 replies to this topic

[folsom500]

Here is a recent article about the CA Death Penalty as it could be sent to the voters of this state to decide to keep it or get rid of it.

While I am not opposed to the Death Penalty - I think it is a serious waste of resources and money to keep it...

What do you think ?

http://www.sacbee.co...say-voters.html

Death penalty opponents say voters will decide whether to abolish punishment
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By Sam Stanton
sstanton@sacbee.com
Published: Thursday, Mar. 1, 2012 - 11:11 am
Last Modified: Thursday, Mar. 1, 2012 - 11:51 am
Advocates of replacing California's death penalty with life imprisonment announced this morning that they had collected 800,000 signatures in their effort to get the issue on November's ballot, an amount they say is more than enough to ensure voters will have a chance to decide the matter

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.co...l#storylink=cpy

[SacKen]

...
While I am not opposed to the Death Penalty - I think it is a serious waste of resources and money to keep it...
...

Agreed. As long as we refuse to apply the punishment, I say get rid of it. It costs too much and is never actually followed-through. Just putting them back in the general population may prove to be more effective anyway. Many death-penalty crimes have elements to them that the typical criminal finds repulsive and often resolve the problem through prison justice.

[Carl G]

I don't like the death penalty for the simple reason that too many people on death row have been found to be innocent. While I believe a guilty person needs to be punished, an innocent one should never pay the ultimate price for a failure in our judicial system. Having said that, I truly believe that our cost will not go down as much as you might think as the "liberal" groups will continue to defend in court those found guilty.

I would suggest the death penalty be kept but would be an option only when absolute, 100% proof is found the person did commit the murder.

[4thgenFolsomite]

Life without parole. that works for me.

[old soldier]

this is still another example why it would be a good idea to oursource the running of California to the state of texas.

the death penalty as it stands provides an excellent money source to all kinds of law firms who get paid by the state for their work on the hundreds of appeals

if they started excuting like texas or put the death penalty folks in the general prison population to old lawyers would be hurting for state money.

all this screwing around for the fun way to excute a person that won't hurt while its happening is a joke, and makes me mad because all my east coast frinds think I approve of all this because I still live in california...

the only reason I live here is because the weather today is 70 and its 35 in clevland

[supermom]

I am one hundred percent pro killing them. We should really catch up. Maybe a line up?
Or an old fashioned french court day.


The only problem I have with the death penalty is that they don't let us watch. I think we should. I think that viewing state authorized killing of human beings for committing capitol offenses against society should be the duty of all good Americans.

As for cost. Hell that could be fixed, right away. Let one of those dudes make one more pathetic appeals jab in the dark by claiming the wait and anticipation of their sentence is cruel and unusual. Then the courts can place a moratorium on the adminstrative of justice of all death row inmates to be not less than one year after initial conviction and sentencing. I am absolutely postive that the 700 plus convicts appeals processes in California could have quite easily accomplished their appeals process in one year.

If not...TFB....They certainly didn't offer another year of life the lives of the people they killed. Or the families that desperately miss them.

Kill them, kill them, kill all of them. NOW. I'll buy the first bullet!

[folsombound]

I would be(and am) in favor of the death penalty if we actually used it. Unfortunately in this era of way too many lawyers, liberal judges who will delay executions for little reason and organizations that will do anything to stop an execution, I see no chance the penalty will be used. What will and does happen is the incredible delays and costs that mean guilty prisoners stay on death row (really 'life row') for 20 or more years and die of old age. If allowed, I would personally take a couple of them out and shoot them (Richard Allen Davis for example) but that ain't going to happen either.
I will vote to abolish the death penalty and put them all away with life and no parole. At least we will save some money and put some lawyers out of work.

[tsukiji]

Why isn't there an aggressive effort to fix our death penalty process? Why can't measures be put in place to enforce it rather than eliminate it? Folks, we have a problem. Prisons are full. We don't need more prisons, we need less criminals. We should open up the death sentence for other crimes, including white collar crimes that cause an inordinate amount of suffering in the populace (think Enron guys, mortgage guys, finance/Madoff-guys). These are high gain, low risk crimes. Make the penalty fit the gain. Cheat society of $100M, off with your head.

If the concern is a false conviction, I've always felt that we have the wrong metrics in place for legal system. For example, the ratio of convictions should not be a key metric for a prosecutor. The truth should be the goal for both parties. So, if a prosecutor successfully convicts a person despite knowledge of innocence (or even preponderance of doubt), then that prosecutor should be subject to the same penalty as the innocently convicted (if/when it's uncovered). Same prison sentence, same death sentence. No more weasily prosecutions -- prosecutor better be damn sure he has the right person and he's not just chasing some metric of success.

[camay2327]

YES, we need the Death Penalty. The problem is California will not use it.
I agree, we could outsource it to Texas.

I remember when my wife and I worked at ESL in Sunnyvale and Richard Farley came in and killed 7 people
and injured a lot more. He was given the death penalty and he is still sitting there watching TV. This was back
in the 1980's.

There is no doubt that he did it. A lot of people knew him and saw him do it.

He is one person that deserves to die. I would do it if I had the chance to.

On the other hand if California will just not do it again, then just
put them all together in one big enclosed field and let them have at each
other until there is only one remaining. Give them spears and swords.

Then we can figure out what to do with the remaining one.

[The Average Joe]

Either streamline the process to less than a year, or abandon it altogether. What we have now is the worst of all systems...society coughs up massive funds, and gets no results (other than the prison guard unions getting more members).

[apeman45]

It's not a deterrent. Why kill them? Life without parole is a much worse punishment and a whole lot cheaper.

[eVader]

The initiative should be "Do we keep the death penalty AND USE IT?". These criminals waste appeal after appeal (argh lawyers) tying up courts and costing $$$$.

[supermom]

I was doing an assignment on the LAPD and some of their useful technology they have, and came across an article by RAND on the VALUE of police. The article has a calculator button that shows how many crimes for the city by ratio of cops and ratio of population and tells you how much it costs the city to investigate and try these crimes.

You will see right away that the data is set up for Los angeles because it is the largest city in CA.

But if you have the data for a city like Sacramento you can get the costs associated for crime in a certain year, as well.

http://www.rand.org/...t-of-crime.html



The point of my bringing this up, there are people screaming that housing a capitol offender is cost prohibitive, regardless of how much you as a tax payer have already spent just to get the guy off the streets ( an average of 8 million dollars). Now you claim that it is less costly to house him for the rest of his life in prison as a lifer than it is to house him for the rest of his life as a death row.

No offense to eferyone one of you but that logic is absolutely incomprehensible. You do realize that a capitol offender will never have a roomy? He will always be housed in solitary. They are too dangerous for the general pop.

So how do you think you are saving money?

Instead of attacking a label as a capitol offender lets look at the reality of what is really costing the money. And lets fix that! How about an honest effort to reform the appellate courts?

[Deb aka Resume Lady]

[quote name='supermom' timestamp='1331311186' post='438175'

The point of my bringing this up, there are people screaming that housing a capitol offender is cost prohibitive, regardless of how much you as a tax payer have already spent just to get the guy off the streets ( an average of 8 million dollars). Now you claim that it is less costly to house him for the rest of his life in prison as a lifer than it is to house him for the rest of his life as a death row.

No offense to eferyone one of you but that logic is absolutely incomprehensible. You do realize that a capitol offender will never have a roomy? He will always be housed in solitary. They are too dangerous for the general pop.

So how do you think you are saving money?

Instead of attacking a label as a capitol offender lets look at the reality of what is really costing the money. And lets fix that! How about an honest effort to reform the appellate courts?
[/quote]

The excessive costs associated with the death penalty are well documented and have to do with the lengthy judicial and appeals processes.

[tsukiji]

If there is a false conviction, legal counsel for the defendant should fight tooth and nail through the appeals process to overturn the verdict.

If the conviction was the right outcome and legal counsel is just appealing on a process cause, let them fight the conviction. But then, let them also be accountable. If the convict is released and repeats a crime against humanity, let said legal counsel face the same penalties as the criminal. In my mind they are complicit, an accomplice, a co-conspirator.

People aren't perfect. Processes aren't perfect. But let the truth be known and those responsible for uncovering the truth be accountable.