Sen. Loni Hancock, D-Berkeley, to introduce bill to abolish death penalty

Mercury News ^ | 6/20/11 | Josh Richman - Oakland Tribune

[NormsRevenge]

An East Bay lawmaker said Monday she'll introduce a bill which, if passed and then approved by voters, would abolish California's death penalty.

The forthcoming bill from state Senate Public Safety Committee Chairwoman Loni Hancock, D-Berkeley, would convert already-condemned inmates' sentences to life in prison without possibility of parole.

"Capital punishment is an expensive failure and an example of the dysfunction of our prisons," Hancock, who also chairs the budget subcommittee that oversees prison spending, said in a news release. "California's death row is the largest and most costly in the United States. It is not helping to protect our state; it is helping to bankrupt us."

California now has 714 people on death row but has executed only 13 since reinstating its death penalty in 1978. ..

"Study after study has shown that capital punishment as a penalty is not a deterrent and that the multiple appeals that drag on for years and years multiply costs and add to the uncertainty and anxiety of victims," Hancock said. "The death penalty failings cannot be fixed; it must be repealed. "... It is time for the Legislature to act."

It's not just a cost issue, she added: Illinois wrongly executed more than a dozen people before it abolished capital punishment earlier this year. "I don't want to see that kind of tragic statistic in California."

Getting the bill past the Democrat-dominated Legislature might be possible, and Gov. Jerry Brown last year said he would "prefer a society that didn't have to use the death penalty."

Convincing voters could be much harder. A Field Poll conducted a year ago found 70 percent of California voters support capital punishment, up from 67 percent in 2006; this support cut across age, gender, racial, religious and party lines. ..

[NormsRevenge]

Have you polled the victim's families lately, Lori?

Most of the death row crowd will die of old age anyway..

The local Fed Judge presiding over the state of the Death Penalty and how it is administered continues to dithers away ,, maybe an end is in sight soon to begin juicing those who are well deserving.... but not for Lori.. and for Moonbeam, a last stand may still loom .. how will a man of the faith choose? for the inmates and mercy or for the victims and justice?

and Hey, Lori. re: stats.. recidivism is zero.

[Prov1322]

Hmmm...will it include abolishing infanticide (abortion)?

[TheDon]

Mend it, don’t end it!

[ScottinVA]

Charlie Manson as well as Sirhan Sirhan.

[Secret Agent Man]

Democrats have MADE capital punishment an expensive failure and dysfunctional. They make a system that should be able to work very easily, into a complex, non-working thing, then bitch the thing is complex and non-working and point to that as a reason to get rid of it.

They ought to be exposed and run out of office.

Stop the endless freaking review processes especially for those that admit to it or are caught on tape (irrefutable evidence) that shows them doing it. Firing squad. One bullet in head and heart. Wn;t be arouund long enough to feel any pain.

[newzjunkey]

The shameful reality in CA is that it would take 59 years to clear out everyone currently on death row if we executed one per month while adding no more.

More of our condemned convicts have died by natural causes and suicide than have actually had their sentences carried out.

It costs thousands more per year per prisoner for death row inmates because of the endless appeals with some sitting there since Carter was in the White House.

There is no way the CA death penalty has a "deterrent" effect.

Make no mistake, this endless red tape has all been by design by activists in and out of black robes to make create a foundation for the case to abolish the death penalty in CA.

[NormsRevenge]

T’was a Jimmy Carter judge, a 9th Circus of Appeasers appointee to boot, spent 3 years ‘researching’ for this “study”.

SFgate.com piece today

Study: Death penalty costlier than life sentences
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/06/21/BA1F1K0ALG.DTL

The three-year study by a federal judge and a law professor also found that California taxpayers have spent an average of $308 million for each of the 13 executions conducted since capital punishment was reinstated in the state in 1978.

The study was conducted by Judge Arthur Alarcon, who sits on the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and his law clerk, Loyola Law School Professor Paula Mitchell, who spent three years examining federal, state and local costs associated with capital punishment....

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Why does the Left hate Justice? Why does the Left hate America and seek to stick it to those very victims it creates thru its policies of destruction of the family and the sanctity of law in a just society?.