California Abolish Death Peanlty- Up to Voters

Should we abolish the death penalty? Personally, I have major issues with the death penalty. However, I would like to take an attempt to look at capital punishment in an economic light instead of bringing morality into the equasion. As of today, more than 100 nations and, after Wednesday this week, 17 states have abandoned the death penalty as an unworkable legal struggle. On Monday, the California Secretary of State declared that an initiative that would replace California’s death penalty with life imprisonment (LWOP) qualified for the November ballot. Since the issue is on the ballot for California voters, it begs the question if California will be the 18th state to abolish capital punishment in favor of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole? We do not have to answer this question right now; all Californians will get to answer this question in November.

A University of California professor at UC Berkeley School of Law, Franklin E. Zimring, writes that no state or nation ended state execution because of a popular vote, and predicts the initiative will ultimately fail. Since no state or nation has ended execution due to a vote, Zimring stated that only when political leaders take up the cause to end a policy that both opponents and proponents agree is not working, will California end its 34-year death penalty. I find it interesting that no state has ever ended execution through a vote but I also understand that the past does not dictate what will happen in the present. I hope that the California voters will see how much money is wasted on capital punishment and will vote to end such scrupulous spending given our current economic state.

In the state of California, there are now 720 condemned convicts on Death Row, this number far exceeds any other state in history. However, the state has only executed only 13 since the death penalty was re-instated in 1978. The policy has cost the state upwards of $4 billion dollars as convictions are prosecuted and mandatory appeals are granted. California’s last execution was 76-year-old Clarence Ray Allen, who was killed by lethal injection in 2006. A federal court judge declared a moratorium on executions in California in 2006 after questions were raised concerning the lethal injection process. The moratorium is expected to extend until 2013.

The reason for instating the death penalty in California is attributed to the rising homicide rate in the state proceeding adoption of the death penalty. Homicides, which have averaged about 2,400 a year for the past three decades, are now at 50-year lows, as is violent crime in general. In 2010, California reported 1,809 homicides, which is 4.9 per 100,000 residents. The reasons for the rate dropping can be debated.

Advances in DNA testing has revealed that many death row inmates were not guilty of the crime for which they were convicted. With the element of doubt interjected into the process, public opinion on the death penalty has shifted. A poll last year saw a rise in voters who favored life without the possibility of patrol over the death penalty given the recent exonerations and the cost of prosecuting death penalty cases.

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