Posted on 07/07/2011 6:31:37 PM PDT by newzjunkey
A bill that seeks to abolish California's death penalty advanced Thursday after its first legislative hearing with support from the author of the state's death penalty and a former warden who presided over executions.
Sen. Loni Hancock, D-Berkeley, said she introduced the bill because California can no longer afford a capital punishment system that is both expensive and ineffective as it battles persistent multibillion-dollar budget deficits.
If eventually signed into law, the bill would put the question before voters in 2012.
The Assembly Public Safety Committee voted 5-2 along party lines in favor of SB490 after hearing testimony from Sacramento attorney and former prosecutor Donald Heller and former San Quentin State Prison warden Jeanne Woodford...
(Excerpt) Read more at sfexaminer.com ...
This bill has always been the long term goal of endless appeals and judicial activism. I don't actually know whether voters would keep the death penalty today considering it doesn't exist in any meaningful form, just on the books.
My prediction, this bill will be crushed!
Expensive? It doesn't have to be that way. That's a liberal "lawyer" thing.
Ineffective? Not one of those executed ever became a "repeat offender".
Why isn't the legislature trying to streamline the death penalty process instead of ending it?
The sad thing is that it really doesn't have to be expensive and time-consuming. Just establish a fast track death penalty court so that arrest to appeals to acquittal or execution can occur in five years. This is how a country like Singapore can acquit or execute a defendant within three years of arrest date.
They might as well just get rid of it. Right now it’s only useful for cops and prosecutors to use as a bargaining chip in getting people to rat each other out. It’s not like it would actually ever happen.
Kill ‘em all, let God or Allah figger out which ones he wants to take home.
You don’t get on death row for stealing a Snickers bar. Start with Manson.
There are a certain percentage of those guys who will take that as an opportunity to kill others.
Within a few months they'll be down to a manageable number, and all without trials, or even guards! You leave those doors open they'll be killing the guards first.
We should do ten per week for a little over a year, and get it the hell over with.
Californians support the death penalty. We expect state officials to do their jobs and quit trying to subvert the will of the people.
I’ll never understand how someone can say letting a person sit in prison for 40-50 years with free healthcare, 3 hots and a cot is less expensive than a needle in the arm and a few 100 cc of chemicals.
Execute one per week and that’s only 700 weeks, about 13 years. Still less than supporting the assholes for their whole lives.
Can you imagine the uproar. Look, it’s better than what we’re doing now IMO. I still think the answer is for the public to rise up and fire any publicly paid official that isn’t trying to implement California law today.
I’m beginning to think the whole Judaical branch of government is a waste of money along with prisons. Just form local militias and either hang criminals or shot them. I know it sound crude but it worked before.
JUst take ‘em all for a bay cruise, get em loaded and drop em off by stinson beach or wherever great whites are being sighted.
“If you kill somebody in Texas, we’ll kill you back”
http://comedians.jokes.com/ron-white/videos/ron-white-—death-penalty
If they allowed us to volunteer to serve on firing squads or to act as hangmen they would have no shortage of good folks willing to serve with no further cost to taxpayers. We’re sick to death of this liberal crap that allows these condemned murderers to linger on death row for decades.
If they would just have two executions a day it would only take about a year to clear out a lot of prison space. And any one who says that wouldn’t serve as a deterrent to more murders is a damn liar!
I hope it passes. Maybe this will be thing to jolt Independents in this state out of habitually voting for Democrats.
From a comment above...If we held one execution per hour it would take 30 days to clear death row.
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