Oct. 19




NEBRASKA:

Secrecy for suppliers would fix death penalty law


At a recent forum sponsored by death penalty opponents in Hastings, the representative of the political campaign opposing the death penalty stated most people who vote will only spend "30 seconds learning about the issue." Her implication that overwhelming public support for repealing the Legislature's elimination of the death penalty was based on voter ignorance was as incorrect as it was condescending.

Contrary to her dismissal of voters as uniformed, I have found most voters asking serious and thoughtful questions about capital punishment. Unfortunately, too often facts about the death penalty in Nebraska are distorted and misrepresented by death penalty opponents.

A frequent talking point of death penalty opponents is that the system for carrying out the penalty is broken beyond repair. The "broken" assertion refers to the inability to obtain sodium thiopental, the anesthetic drug administered to produce unconsciousness during lethal injection. What capital punishment opponents do not tell voters is that the drug is only unavailable due to political activism and public harassment of companies that manufacture the drug. One single statutory change fixes the allegedly "broken beyond repair" system and enables legal access to sodium thiopental.

Statutory protection of the identity of the manufacturer of sodium thiopental would open a domestic source. 12 states already have shield laws. Transparency can be successfully guaranteed, making laboratory analysis of the drug publicly available for evaluation of purity and efficacy. If Nebraska voters repeal the Legislature's action, senators can quickly fix a system they have heretofore refused to repair.

Voters are likely unaware of the human cost of death penalty opponent's successful elimination of sodium thiopental from the U.S. market to protect the lives of convicted death row inmates. Sodium thiopental is a safe, effective, and FDA-approved anesthetic agent, considered a mainstay of anesthesia. Protests led the last U.S. manufacturer of sodium thiopental to cease production of the drug in 2009. Sandoz, a subsidiary of Novartis, manufactures the drug in Europe, but the company has banned its import into the United States to prevent its use in lethal injection.

The unavailability of sodium thiopental prompted the American Society of Anesthesiologists to appeal to the FDA to aid in importation, citing "a dangerous reduction in the availability of anesthesia induction medications" and "that the safety of American patients is now in jeopardy." The anesthesiologists stated the irony that many more lives will be lost or put in jeopardy as a result of not having the drug available for its legitimate medical use.

Propofol, the anesthetic drug substituted due to the lack of sodium thiopental, is not indicated for use in pregnant, geriatric, cardiovascular, or neurologic surgical patients because it causes dangerous drops in blood pressure and respiratory depression in newborns. A 2nd class of drugs, called pressors, are required to counteract propofol's negative effects. Propofol has also experienced production shortages, leaving physicians with less than optimal options for safely anesthetizing patients.

The assertion of sodium thiopental is considered "illegal" by FDA and the implication that it is unsafe is absolutely false. Sodium thiopental is an FDA-approved safe and effective drug. Its importation has been restricted by executive action of the DEA.

I opposed the Legislature's elimination of the death penalty on every vote. My research proves Nebraska's system is fixable. Senators have a straightforward, proven solution to make Nebraska's death penalty enforceable. Instead, previous Legislatures have failed to act and further complicated the system. Voters should not be misled, and patients should not be denied effective medical therapy to protect convicted killers.

(source: Opinion; Sen. John Kuehn of Heartwell represents District 38 in the Nebraska Legislature----Kearney Hub)

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Governor shares reasons for supporting death penalty


Public safety is one of my top priorities as your governor. One of the tools law enforcement needs to keep our families and communities safe is laws that are tough-on-crime. Criminal penalties like mandatory sentencing laws, 3-strikes laws and the death penalty act as deterrents and provide justice.

Last year, the Legislature passed Legislative Bill 268 to abolish the death penalty. There was an immediate effort to allow Nebraska voters to decide the issue on the ballot. During the summer of 2015, enough petition signatures were gathered not only to allow the people to vote, but also to prevent LB268 from going into effect until after the vote of the people this November.

Next month, voters will decide whether to abolish or keep the death penalty. The question on the ballot pertains to retaining or repealing the bill the Legislature passed. A vote to retain the bill passed by the Legislature will abolish the death penalty in Nebraska. A vote to repeal the bill passed by the Legislature will keep the death penalty in Nebraska.

I am a strong advocate to keep the death penalty because it is a critical tool for law enforcement and criminal prosecutors to protect public safety.

First, the death penalty protects our corrections officers and law enforcement. Every week, numerous men and women go to work in our corrections system. They risk their lives to provide security at our prisons as well as to deliver programming to help inmates become productive members of society upon release. In prison management, the death penalty is a safeguard against violent criminals who are already behind bars. Without the death penalty, an inmate sentenced to life in prison has nothing to lose by taking the life of a correction office. In fact, there have been a number of law enforcement and corrections officers who have thanked me for my support of the death penalty.

The death penalty also helps protect our communities. Those working to abolish the death penalty argue that life in prison will protect our communities, however, consider the story of Laddie Dittrich. In 1973, Laddie Dittrich was convicted of burglary and first degree murder. He received a life sentence. Prior to my administration, the Pardons Board commuted Dittrich's sentence to 80 years to life. Subsequently, Dittrich was paroled in 2014. Later that year, Dittrich was arrested for third degree sexual assault involving a 10-year-old girl. A life in prison sentence does not guarantee an offender will stay in prison, and it did not protect the community from Dittrich.

As we approach the vote, there is an increasing amount of misinformation. For example, out-of-state advocates are discussing wrongful convictions and the possibility of putting innocent people to death. This is an important conversation to have, however, nobody is claiming that any of Nebraska's 10 death row inmates are innocent. In fact, three of them are on video murdering 5 people in the attempted robbery of a Norfolk bank. Checks and balances in Nebraska ensure that the death penalty is used sparingly and applied justly, and rapid advancements in DNA technology will help to ensure accuracy in future cases.

Anti-death penalty activists paid a researcher for a study that said the death penalty costs the state more money. The study relies on out-of-state data rather than Nebraska statistics. Attorney General Doug Peterson identified "serious inaccuracies" in the study, noting that the study suggests Nebraska incurs 20 times the costs realized by other states. In fact, the Appropriations Bill advanced from the Unicameral???s independent legislative fiscal office found zero dollars in cost savings associated with abolishing the death penalty.

In the next couple of weeks, Nebraskans will weigh the arguments to abolish or keep the death penalty, and it's important people have the facts instead of bad information. It's also critical that you read the ballot language very carefully. A vote to retain LB 268 will abolish the death penalty in Nebraska. A vote to repeal LB268 will keep the death penalty in Nebraska.

(source: Gov. Pete Ricketts, The Fremont Tribune)

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Time is right to abolish state's ineffective death penalty law


Nebraskans will make a historic decision Nov. 8 when asked to weigh in on the issue of capital punishment, and based on a number of convincing factors it seems time that life in prison is now a better option than maintaining a death sentence that ultimately can't be used.

Nebraska lawmakers voted to abolish the death penalty in May of 2015, later overriding Gov. Pete Ricketts' veto. Death penalty supporters had no trouble getting enough signatures to put this question up to a statewide vote, and in the end that seems appropriate. This vote represents a significant life and death issue, and should be decided by all Nebraskans.

Though once a supported means of doling out punishment appropriate for only the worst of crimes, the death penalty now seems more of a costly exercise in futility. The state last executed a prisoner in 1997 and has been unable to acquire the necessary lethal injection drugs for several years. In effect, we've already been without capital punishment for almost 2 decades.

During that time, however, the state has spent an estimated $14 million a year dealing with appeal after appeal after appeal, which has become standard operating procedure. With life hanging in the balance, we understand the need to exhaust all legal challenges, but the end results suggest that this system simply isn't working as a means of fighting crime and/or deterring evil-doers from striking again.

During the past 43 years, more than 1,800 homicides have been committed in Nebraska, and yet only 10 prisoners now sit on death row. Those statistics raise all kinds of questions in and of themselves in terms of fairness and consistency, yet another strike against the death penalty provision. One could also argue that DNA testing has increased the possibility of death row inmates being exonerated years after the crime.

There is a growing wave of opposition to death penalty legislation nationwide, as Nebraska is now one of 20 states that have done away with capital punishment. The reasons for that are many and varied, including moral and religious rationale. On that note his is an issue of the heart and personal conviction.

The irony is, even if voters decide to revive the state's capital punishment law prison officials will be unable to carry out executions for the foreseeable future. That makes no sense whatsoever.

The time has come to accept the fact that sentencing the state???s worst criminals to life in prison is a better solution than placing them on a meaningless, costly death row.

Kurt Johnson

(source: Letter to the Editor, Aurora News Register)






ARIZONA:

Arizona court hearing to focus on lethal injection drug


A judge presiding over a lawsuit that protests the way Arizona carries out executions is scheduled to hear arguments Wednesday over a sedative that was recently abandoned as one of the state's lethal injection drugs.

Lawyers for the state are seeking to dismiss the lawsuit's claim that the sedative midazolam can't ensure that condemned inmates won't feel the pain that's caused by another drug in a 3-drug execution protocol.

The state announced nearly four months ago that it was eliminating its use of midazolam after its supply expired and another supplier couldn't be found because of pressure from opponents of the death penalty. Attorneys for the state say the legal claim is moot because the drug won't be used in the future executions.

U.S. District Judge Neil Wake scheduled the hearing after learning that Ohio now has a supply of midazolam and plans to resume executions there in January.

Executions in Arizona will remain on hold until the lawsuit is resolved. They were put on hold after the July 2014 death of convicted killer Joseph Rudolph Wood, who was given 15 dozes of midazolam and a painkiller and who took nearly 2 hours to die. His attorney said the execution was botched.

Several of the lawsuit's claims have been dismissed, but lawyers for the condemned inmates want to press forward with allegations that the state has abused its discretion in the methods and amounts of the drugs used in past executions.

Similar challenges to the death penalty are playing out in other parts of the country that seek more transparency about where states get their execution drugs.

States are struggling to obtain execution drugs because European pharmaceutical companies began blocking the use of their products for lethal injections.

(source: Associated Press)

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Arizona prosecutor with more death sentences than 99.5 percent of counties is up for re-election


Sheriff Joe Arpaio gets a lot of attention in Phoenix for being corrupt, infantile, fanatical, and power hungry, but he's not the only bad public servant out there. Bill Montgomery, the Maricopa County Attorney, is one of the nation's worst prosecutors. Montgomery, a Republican, is facing re-election on Nov. 8. His opponent, former prosecutor and Democrat Diego Rodriguez, has been critical of Montgomery's record. "People just want to know the County Attorney's Office matches their idea of justice," he said earlier this week. According to Rodriguez, Montgomery "is a political animal. He's not what I am comfortable having administer justice in this county."

Montgomery is bad on a whole host of issues - the death penalty, abortion, immigration, marijuana, sex crimes, racial justice, animal protection, transparency, and innocence claims, to name a few - and we will cover them all over the next few weeks. But for now, lets just start with the fact that Maricopa administers the death penalty more often than 99.5 % of other counties or county-equivalents. Yes, 99.5 %.

All of that is because of Bill Montgomery's office. In fact, between 2010, the year he was elected, and 2015, Bill Montgomery's office was responsible for 28 death sentences. From "Too Broken to Fix," a report from Harvard Law School's Fair Punishment Project:

Between 2010 and 2015, Maricopa County had 28 death sentences. Maricopa's rate of death sentencing per 100 homicides is approximately 2.3 times higher than the rate for the rest of Arizona. Though Maricopa has 1 % of the nation's population, it accounts for 3.6 % of the death sentences returned nationally between 2010 and 2015.

That puts Montgomery's office in the top 1/2 of 1 % when it comes to death penalty sentences. This, despite the fact that death penalty cases are insanely expensive for the taxpayer, and despite the fact that evidence shows that the death penalty isn't a real deterrent.

And, if the sheer number of cases alone isn't adequately concerning, the defendants share some troubling similarities.

Researchers from Fair Punishment Project attribute much of the high death penalty sentences to prosecutorial overreach. "What we saw in Maricopa County that struck us the most was the pattern of over-zealousness from the prosecution," said Smith, director of the Fair Punishment Project and senior research fellow at Harvard Law School. "Both in terms of pushing the ethical and legal boundaries in cases, and also seeking the death sentence and obtaining it some of the most broken and vulnerable people."

Montgomery wants it both ways. He wants to sentence a ton of people to death while pretending he's not that bad. The Arizona Republic reported this week that "Montgomery said he has been bringing the number of cases down[.]" But the numbers are clear - Bill Montgomery continues to rack up death sentences more than virtually any other prosecutor, despite evidence of impropriety and racial bias.

Montgomery and Rodriguez are on the ballot in Maricopa County on Nov. 8.

(source: dailykos.com)






CALIFORNIA:

Californians dying death penalty


Californians will abolish the death penalty sooner or later, it doesn???t really matter which argument ultimately convinces them, be it moral, financial or risk of executing innocent people. The sooner Californians discontinue the death penalty the better. It is a primitive system that kills people, it's end needs to come sooner rather than later.

On the ballot this Nov. 8 there will be 2 competing measures addressing the death penalty in California. Proposition 62 and proposition 66 both share the same overtones, being that the death penalty is a broken system in need of intervention, but don't see eye to eye on the prognosis.

Taxpayers For Sentencing Reform sponsored an online ad that said, "California's death penalty system was beyond repair" and plagued with "endless appeals" resulting in "millions of legal fees."

Californians aren't happy with the state of capital punishment in their state. In 1972 the California Supreme Court found that the death penalty constituted cruel and unusual punishment and then reinstated it in 1978.

Since then 13 inmates were executed. Today there are 756 inmates on death row in California, 233 of them in Los Angeles County, and it's costing the state 150 billion per year.

Prop. 62 proposes to repeal the death penalty as maximum punishment for persons found guilty of murder and replaces it with life imprisonment without possibility of parole. It would be retroactive, applying to inmates previously sentenced to death and it would require the inmate to work while in prison and give 60 % of their earnings to victim restitution.

"For me, it's about costs, it's money," former El Dorado County Supervisor Ron Briggs said during a debate in September. Briggs is the son of John Briggs, the lawmaker who successfully drafted the proposal to bring back capital punishment in California in the 70s, and one of the strongest advocate for Prop. 62.

"We thought we would save money," Briggs said. "We thought we would bring conclusion and closure to the victim's families. And on every single fact, we were dead wrong."

It's hard to say if the financial argument will be strong enough for voters. Surely it will add some grip to the already shifting sensibility of public opinion towards the death penalty.

In 1978 the death penalty was reintroduced with the support of over 70 % of the voters. In 2012, when another Californian ballot measure tried to repeal it, it failed 52 to 48 %. The majority of the voters still wanted to keep the death penalty, but not as many. In 2016 Pew Research poll in 2016 found the capital punishment had the lowest support in 40 years.

"Ideas in the community change. The supreme court has mentioned this a number of times, the consensus of the community evolves," attorney at law Nancy Haydt said during a panel presented by Capital Public Radio. "As to the death penalty, 7 states in the past few years have done away with the death penalty so there is a sense that people are looking more critically at the death penalty and are not feeling nearly as comfortable with it as they have in the past."

A study in 2009 proved that the death penalty isn't an effective deterrent to crime and according to the American Civil liberties Union's (ACLU) website between 1973 and 2015, 148 innocent death-row prisoners in 26 different states were exonerated and released.

It can only be speculated exactly how many people were wrongly executed, but a research shows that almost four percent of U.S. capital punishment sentences are wrongful convictions.

The proponents of Prop. 66 agree that the system is broken but do not want to end the death penalty because they think it wouldn't be just for the families of the victims. They want to reform the execution process speeding up the appeals system.

"At the end of the day, once you have executed a condemned inmate, he can never kill again," the president of the Los Angeles Deputy District Attorney Association Michele Hanisee said during a debate on positions 61 and 66. One can hardly argue with her from a logical standpoint, but on every other level, there is much to say.

It is true, as she says, that there are people on death row that have served time for murder, got out, and killed again or that while serving life without parole killed another inmate or a prison guard, but saying that "to put it bluntly a dead person cannot commit another crime and that alone is a deterrent," is too simplistic to say the least.

The last person to be executed in California was Clarence Ray Allen in 2006. He was already in prison for murder when he orchestrated the murder of additional people.

"The belief that we are safe because they are in prison is a false promise," district attorney in Sacramento County, Anne Marie Schubert, said in the same debate.

That does not mean that we should put them to death because we don't know how to manage them? For her, a supporter of Prop. 66, this "is about the victims of crime. We are talking about roughly one thousand victims that have been murdered by death row killers, we are talking about well over 200 children who most of them have been raped and murdered, we are talking about child killers, serial killers, police officers who have been killed in line of duty, we are talking about mass murderers who walk into schools and kill people for no other reason than just kill people."

We are talking about criminals, but the state shouldn't have power over their life, to end their life. As monstrous as they are, they have rights. Inmates have rights. Some they lose, but some they get to keep. They keep the right, under the Eighth Amendment, to be free from "cruel and unusual" punishment.

It's about time start considering the death penalty as a cruel and unusual punishment regardless of the efficiency of the drugs used for the lethal injection. It is perverse to keep looking for a dignifying way to put inmates to death-as monstrous as their crimes can be.

(source: Marta Valier, Pasadena City College Courier)

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Death penalty in double gang murder at Bob's hamburger joint? Owner accidentally killed


An 18-year-old reputed gang member who allegedly opened fire inside a burger restaurant in a Harbor City strip mall, killing a gang target and unintentionally murdering the eatery's longtime owner was facing capital murder charges Tuesday that could send him to death row.

Joey Alfred Mendoza, who wore some kind of mask during the attack, is scheduled to be arraigned Nov. 16 at the Long Beach courthouse on 2 counts of murder stemming from the attack at Bob's Hamburgers last Wednesday morning that killed Charalambos Antonelos, 61, of San Pedro, and Louis Garcia, 23, of Wilmington.

Detectives say Garcia was the target, and restaurant owner Antonelos was struck by stray gunfire.

The murder charges, filed Monday, include the special circumstance allegations of multiple murders and murder carried out to further the activities of the defendant's "criminal street gang," along with an allegation that he personally and intentionally discharged a handgun.

Prosecutors will decide later whether to seek the death penalty against Mendoza, who was arrested a day after the shooting.

Mendoza allegedly pulled out a handgun and fired several shots after approaching Garcia as he stood next to the restaurant's counter about 9:30 a.m. Garcia collapsed and died at the scene.

Antonelos, who had been working behind the counter, died at a hospital.

Witnesses and police said the gunman's face was covered during the attack.

"Harbor detectives identified the suspect through surveillance video, witness statements and gang intelligence," according to a statement released by the Los Angeles Police Department.

Mendoza has remained behind bars since he was arrested about 1:45 a.m. last Thursday.

An employee said Bob's Hamburgers had been operating for about 30 years, and distraught customers told reporters that the longtime owner was known for giving out free food to those in need.

(source: mynewsla.com)

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Hercules: Convicted killer's past disseminated during death penalty hearing

Now that they've found him guilty of murder, a Contra Costa jury has been asked to decide whether Darnell Washington should live or die.

Washington, 27, was convicted in September of murdering Hercules resident Susie Ko, a 55-year-old retired kindergarten teacher who was stabbed to death in her home in 2012. At the time of her death, Washington was on the run from the law, having escaped from a San Bernardino County jail weeks earlier.

Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty against Washington. In her statements to the jury, prosecutor Molly Manoukian has said that Ko suffered before she died, and that Washington beat and stabbed her to death so that he could steal her car.

Ko was popular in the Hercules community; hundreds attended her funeral, and dozens have sat in on Washington's trial, including Ko's former students. Her abrupt death shocked residents in the small town, which had only a handful of homicides over the previous 10 years.

Less is known about Washington. He spent time in a group home as a child, but kept in contact with his mother. He got into fights in high school. He was arrested and convicted of robbery and carjacking as a teen.

In his early 20s, while awaiting trial on felony charges, he escaped from San Bernardino County Jail with the help of his wife. Days later, he got into a shootout with Southern California police, then fled to the Bay Area, stole a car in Fremont, attempted a robbery at a Kmart, and ended up at Susie Ko's Ash Court home.

He was arrested in Washington state after a brief police pursuit in October 2012. His wife later accepted a plea deal, taking 26 years for voluntary manslaughter.

The penalty phase of the trial is likely to put Washington's life under a microscope. On Tuesday, the prosecution presented its witnesses, including one woman who testified that Washington participated in an attempted robbery in 2004, and another who said he pushed her in 1999, when he was 11 years old. Washington was staying in a Los Angeles-area group home where the woman worked. He had been instructed to write something 200 times as a punishment for bad behavior when he became frustrated, shoved stuff off of the table he was writing on, and ended up shoving the woman, she testified.

During cross-examination, Washington's attorney, Tim Ahearn, asked the woman whether she remembered Washington as being bright and having potential.

(source: East Bay Times)

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A death penalty by any other name


Proposition 62, the "Justice That Works Act," claims to end the death penalty in California. But if it is voted in, it will result in the death of thousands of prisoners. In this case, a death penalty by another name will kill no less effectively, no less cruelly.

Life without the possibility of parole, particularly after the passage of this ballot initiative, will mean exactly what it says. Or as the author of the proposition prosaically framed it: "They grow old in prison and they die in prison." Death is the expected outcome of the penalty; the death penalty in other words.

There's more to Prop. 62 that should warrant caution. The language calls for all of us so sentenced, while we're awaiting our old age and eventual deaths, to be housed in "high-security" prisons. In this state, home to the largest prison system ever found by the U.S. Supreme Court to be violating the cruel and unusual punishments clause of the Constitution, on an industrial scale, that means a lifetime of suffering and deprivation. It also means a virtual blank check being handed over to prison bureaucrats to exact whatever kind of brutality they see fit.

The language of the initiative elevates the expansions of the widely derided "felony murder rule" to the almost unchangeable level of constitutional, voter-approved law. Under the felony murder rule, in a case where the police shoot and kill a suspect, any accomplices, even a driver, can be charged with 1st-degree murder. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of prisoners serving life without the possibility of parole sentences due to the many contortions of this legal precept.

In case anyone has forgotten, these same arguments were made 4 years ago, and they failed. The difference this time is added provisions to increase the harshness of the sentence and an even more direct appeal to revenge sentencing. The conclusion of the professional death penalty abolitionists appears to be the only way to rid our state of the stain of capital punishment is to hand the voters a pile of stones to throw at prisoners.

The rest of the industrialized, democratic countries long ago abandoned capital punishment as a violation of basic human rights. They did it by outlawing the death penalty, plain and simple. There was no ugly trade-off. For some reason I can't quite fathom, our professional death penalty abolitionists settled on an appeasement strategy instead.

Within just the last few years, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that life without the possibility of parole sentences are a violation of human rights and banned them. The interesting thing is out of a continent of roughly 500 million people there turned out to be about 100 prisoners sentenced to the other death penalty. There are more than that in the building I'm assigned to; in California there are close to 5,000, in the U.S., 50,000. And even without these terrible punishments, somehow the Europeans manage to have a far lower murder rate.

Pope Francis, in an address to the International Association of Penal Law in 2014, referred to long life sentences as "hidden death sentences."

The Campaign to End the Death Penalty does not support Prop. 62, and Human Rights Watch, one of the world's premier civil rights organizations and committed abolitionists, does not support it either. These are the kind of telling details that should raise everyone's mental radar.

If Prop. 62 passes, I'm sure the backers will congratulate themselves for ending the death penalty in California. No doubt Mike Farrell, author and prime sponsor, will be given some kind of humanitarian award from his limousine-lefty pals.

The truth on the ground, inside the broken, violent, dysfunctional high-security prisons will be quite a different story. Almost 6,000 men and women will be forced into worse conditions, with severely restricted appeal rights, to grow old and die miserable deaths in prison.

I've now served almost 37 years for killing a man in a drunken fistfight when I was 19 years old. I was guilty, and I deserved punishment. I've worked hard to become better than my worst moment, and punished I most certainly have been. Anywhere else on this planet, I'd be out of prison by now. But here in California, in our enlightened, advanced state, self-appointed celebrity leaders of civil rights groups want my punishment just getting started. That's no way to end the death penalty.

If I could, I'd vote no on Prop. 62.

(source: Op-Ed; Kenneth E. Hartman is the founder and executive director of The Other Death Penalty Project, a nonprofit organization of prisoners dedicated to ending all forms of the death penalty, including life without the possibility of parole----San Francisco Examiner)

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California Has a Bloated, Unsustainable Death Penalty


With 2 death penalty propositions on the November ballot, Californians are reexamining capital punishment. For fiscal conservatives, it should be a simple matter of dollars and cents.

California's death penalty has cost taxpayers over $4 billion since 1978, according to a 2011 study. Death penalty experts Judge Arthur L. Alarcon and Professor Paula M. Mitchell estimate that "capital trials cost on average an additional $1 million more than non-capital cases," and "often cost 10-20 times more than murder trials that don't involve the death penalty."

Let those numbers sink in. What have California's taxpayers gotten for their $4 billion investment? 13 executions and three wrongful capital convictions. Meanwhile, the capital punishment system doesn't adequately protect society and is a harmful and traumatic process for murder victims' families.

So what exactly makes capital case trials so much more expensive? To begin with, capital cases have a minimum of 2 attorneys working on each side (for both the defense and the prosecution) rather than 1 per side typically found in most non-capital cases. Capital cases generally have multiple investigators and experts and an extended jury selection process. Furthermore, death penalty trials are much longer, and capital proceedings have an additional sentencing trial, which is unique to death cases. The initial trials are where the largest portion of the added cost is usually found, not in the appeals, as is often believed.

Additionally, the appeals process is very complex and expensive. Outside of the courtroom, the cost of housing death row inmates heaps a heavy burden on the shoulders of the California taxpayer as well. Housing them costs an additional $90,000 annually per inmate. After crunching the numbers, it is starkly apparent that California???s death penalty system is yet another example of a bloated and unsustainable government system. With California's November elections quickly approaching, there are two ballot initiatives that deserve further investigation before any votes are cast - Proposition 62 and Proposition 66. Prop. 62 would repeal the death penalty and replace it with life imprisonment without the option of parole (LWOP). Additionally, those serving LWOP would be required to work and pay restitution to the families of their victims. Prop. 66, on the other hand, would do quite the opposite. Prop. 66 would keep the death penalty in place and attempt to shorten the appeals process.

The effects of instituting Prop. 62 would be largely beneficial - millions of dollars would be saved annually and California would no longer risk executing an innocent person. Meanwhile, former death row inmates would still be safely kept off of the streets under their new LWOP sentencing. Conversely, Prop. 66 would not only result in more of the same in terms of a huge financial burden, but the initiative could also have dangerous repercussions for those sentenced to death. By speeding up the appeals process Prop. 66 would heighten the potential of executing innocent people. Although costly, the lengthy appeals process has been put in place in order to ensure that those sentenced to die for their crimes are in fact guilty.

It has taken up to 17 years to release a wrongly convicted person from California's death row. Since 1989, 68 individuals in California have been wrongfully convicted of murder and later exonerated. State-sanctioned killing is a matter that should not be taken lightly. When a life is on the line, there is no acceptable margin of error.

The choice between these 2 propositions is clear - one will save California taxpayers millions of dollars each year, while the other will cost California taxpayers millions. To put this into real terms, the State's independent Legislative Analyst determined Prop .62 will save $150 million annually. That's $150 million a year that could be put to better use. That money could be returned to the taxpayers or it could be redirected into funding for education, public safety or crime prevention - all of which would positively impact far more lives than California's current spending on the death penalty.

(source: Op-Ed; Katherine Dwyer is a Charles Koch Institute Communications Fellow with Conservatives Concerned about the Death Penalty, a Project of EJUSA----San Jose Inside)






USA:

Philanthropy And The Death Penalty


Savvy philanthropists know that change takes time. Whatever your political or philosophical beliefs, moving the legal or cultural norms of a country is no mean feat. A case in point: the campaign against the death penalty in the United States. It's an effort to change deeply entrenched values and policy in the face of very long odds.

The modern history of the fight to abolish the death penalty in the United States began in 1976 when the Supreme Court restored capital punishment, after having ruled in 1972 that as then structured it was unconstitutional. In the decades following its restoration, which were marked with widespread concern about law and order, a large majority of Americans supported capital punishment and states continued to impose and administer it. So why did Atlantic Philanthropies - one of the nation's biggest foundations - decide to invest nearly $60 million over 10 years in a campaign to end the death penalty in the United States?

By 2004, based on the success of its earlier anti-death penalty grants and the momentum of exonerations grounded in DNA evidence, Atlantic foresaw a turning point. In 2005, following the release of the documentary film After Innocence, the issue caught the public's attention. Though the death penalty remained legal in 38 states, executions had been on the decline for 5 years - down to 59 annually from a modern peak of 98 in 1999. Atlantic joined the cause by partnering with donors and advocates already working to abolish the juvenile death penalty - a more modest and achievable goal.

Indeed, in 2005, the Supreme Court abolished the death penalty for juveniles. This was a critical moment. While Atlantic had been only one among a group of funders supporting the effort, and not the "first mover" - the Supreme Court decision suggested that abolishing the death penalty might ultimately be a winnable battle. "Because there was so much traction from the juvenile work," explained Atlantic program executive Annmarie Benedict, "we felt that we were in a good position to pull the field together with a big bet, and build on the lessons we learned as funders and advocates coming out of the juvenile work."

The path to eliminating capital punishment was not yet clear, but the successful fight on behalf of juveniles formed a rough blueprint: build momentum for abolition at the state level, with a Supreme Court ruling as the ultimate goal. Over the next 10 years, Atlantic invested nearly $60 million in the effort. Much of this went to a collaborative grant making organization, the Proteus Fund. The death penalty is a complex issue: the number of jurisdictions, organizations, and funders working in the field make it difficult to navigate. By using a trusted intermediary, Atlantic intentionally ceded some of its control. In turn, it could rely on experts that the Proteus Fund brought to the table.

Importantly, Atlantic also used its Atlantic Advocacy Fund, a 501(c)(4) entity that can fund a greater range of advocacy activities than the 501(c)(3) structure often adopted by foundations. Atlantic Advocacy Fund dollars could support direct lobbying, ballot initiatives, and voter mobilization - where more traditional grant funding might be restricted to organizations focused on research, litigation, and educational activities.

Policy change on this issue has been striking, though Atlantic's ultimate goal remains far from being achieved. Since 2007, 7 states have abolished the death penalty, at least partially due to campaigns funded by Atlantic. 4 other states have placed formal or informal moratoriums on executions. In 2015, states carried out the lowest number of executions (28) and new death sentences (in the mid-50s) in modern history. Other factors besides philanthropy have played a role, such as dramatically lower crime rates in many jurisdictions, as well as highly publicized mistakes, including exonerations based on DNA evidence and botched executions. While advocates continue to hope for a Supreme Court ruling abolishing the death penalty, there is no way to predict if or when this will happen.

Advocacy campaigns are natural platforms for philanthropy, but they require extraordinary patience and a willingness to work with others to achieve their objectives. It also requires donors to tolerate the risk not merely of coming up a bit short, but of achieving nothing at all. This has played out in efforts around gun control and abortion, where funders and advocates have not seen the needle move significantly for decades. Whether this will become the case for abolishing the death penalty is unclear. But it is conceivable to think that without funders, like Atlantic, advocates for this cause would not have the traction that they now do.

(source: Forbes)

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