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Wake Up CA Assembly! Who are You Punishing with this Prison Budget?I don't know what they're drinking in the assembly in Sacramento, but it's not the coffee we've been offering. Assembly members stumbled out of the chamber early Friday morning without voting on a bill that would reduce prison spending; a bill that is supported by the Republican governor, the head of the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, and received an "aye" vote in the senate on Thursday. One of the sticking points in the assembly: the idea that we might reduce some petty thefts to misdemeanors, rather than crimes that can result in a prison sentence when charged as a felony. Really? Assembly members are really voting against the bill because they think stealing a piece of pizza should get you a spot in California's overwhelmed prison system at the price tag of $50,000 a year? If that's what they are thinking, they can't be thinking straight. They must be under the influence of something, or more likely, some special interests. They are certainly not acting in the interest of public safety for the people of California. The bill passed by the senate is by no means perfect, but it's an important first step in the right direction — it will only begin to get us close to the $1.2 billion in cuts needed from the prison budget and implement small but overdue criminal justice reforms. In passing the bill, the senate showed tremendous leadership and put healing California corrections and our public safety first. Doubt is currently looming over whether our assembly will match the senate's courage. If our assembly members insist on maintaining the status quo and gutting any real reform out of the bill, the people they will really be punishing are the people most in need: the children and the poor who depend on the state's safety net. If we can't make sensible reforms to save money in our corrections system, then more children will lose their health care, more teachers will be laid off, and more health and safety programs will be cut. Inevitably, we will have more people stealing more pizza and headed off to the only government program left: prison. It's time for our elected leaders to lead us out of this mess.
Wake Up California: It’s Time to Get Real About Criminal Justice Reform(Originally posted on Daily Kos.) The "Prison Population and Budget Reduction Package" proposed by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) is like a drunk person walking home from a bar — it knows where it wants to go but oftentimes you find it stumbling off the sidewalk or turning down the wrong street.Since we believe budget cutting is no small feat and should be taken very seriously, especially in the wake of the prison riots in Chino and public safety needs, we've decided to pour the CDCR a strong cup of coffee and see if we can't point the plan in a better direction. The People's Budget Fix, as we've named it, responds to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's $1.2 billion in unallocated cuts to the corrections budget with a series of smart reforms to save the state billions of dollars, improve public safety, and advance long-needed adjustments in California's Corrections system. Here's an outline of some of the ways the CDCR's budget proposal goes wrong and how we can do better. Step 1: Reserve Prison for Serious Offenses
Step 2: Focus Resources on Recidivism-Reduction
Step 3: Comprehensive Criminal Justice Reform The People's Budget Fix is indeed a sobering cup of coffee, opening our eyes to what smart and sensible criminal justice reforms can do to help save our state more money, improve public safety, and begin reforming our ailing prison system. But we can't stop there. The People's Budget Fix also calls upon the governor and the California legislature to go beyond the immediate fixes identified above and strive for lasting budget reforms. We must delve deeper into the sobering realities of our criminal justices system and its failures. We need a balanced sentencing commission to take the politics out of the public safety debate and put the people back in. And we need to address two costly and ineffective areas of our criminal justice system: the death penalty and California's Three Strikes law. Both of these policies cost that state billions of dollars in prison spending and court costs with no demonstrable returns for public safety. It is time for California to limit Three Strikes to violent offenses and replace the death penalty with effective alternatives that promote public safety. On August 18, when the governor and the legislature return to Sacramento to begin discussions of the Corrections' budget, we plan to be there to rally for the People's Budget Fix and to meet with Legislatures to discuss our proposals.We hope our proposals help our political leaders see straight and get us all home safely. The People's Budget Fix is supported by Drug Policy Alliance, the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, Families Amend California's Three Strikes, and the ACLU California affiliates.
Day of Action to End the Death Penalty(Cross-posted on Daily Kos and Calitics.) Today, for the first time ever, Californians will have the chance to weigh in on the state’s broken death penalty system. Victims, clergy, legal experts, wrongfully convicted individuals and concerned taxpayers from around the state will converge on Sacramento for a public hearing of the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, to give their comments on new regulations for lethal injections. The hearing comes after three years of legal challenges and three years without executions in California. If the rules are adopted and more pending legal challenges are resolved quickly, executions could resume as soon as 2010. But only four people have exhausted all of their appeals and would even be eligible for execution. Meanwhile in the last three years, 16 people on death row have died of natural causes or suicide. California has only managed to carry out 13 executions since the death penalty was reinstated in 1977. Yet despite having no official method of execution for the last three years, California has wasted hundreds of millions of dollars on the death penalty system, and stands poised to waste another $1 billion over the next five years. So after voicing their opinion on executions today, concerned taxpayers will also have their chance to voice their opinion on wasteful spending, calling on the Governor to end the death penalty altogether and save the state millions. Coincidentally, it was exactly one year ago that Californians got the first comprehensive report on exactly how dysfunctional and expensive the death penalty system already is. On June 30, 2008 the bi-partisan California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice released their report on the death penalty, finding that it costs taxpayers $137 million each year, yet remains riddled with serious flaws, including a real risk of wrongful execution and an appeals process that causes suffering to murder victim survivors. On the other hand, the Commission found that the alternative of permanent imprisonment for all those currently on death row would save $125 million each year, while still protecting the public. Now, one year later, the system is just as dysfunctional and even more expensive. Rather than continuing the status quo, the Governor could suspend the death penalty and save the state $1 billion in five years. The potential savings break down as: $125 million per year in the extra expenses of the death penalty. By converting all death sentences to permanent imprisonment, Gov. Schwarzenegger would save the state over $600 million in five years. $400 million for the construction of a new death row. The State Auditor estimates building a new death row facility at San Quentin will cost at least $400 million. Building anywhere else will be even more expensive. If all death sentences were converted and any new death sentences suspended for five years, we would avoid this cost. Some hear these figures and think the best solution would be to “speed up” the death penalty appeals process. But the Commission tried to find ways to do that, and discovered they would cost even more money — nearly $100 million more. Today, hundreds of diverse California residents will seize their first opportunity to speak out publicly against the death penalty and will say loud and clear to the Governor and the Legislature stop wasting our money on this failed system.
A Better Way to Balance the Budget—and Protect Public SafetyA series of common sense, waste-cutting proposals would address two of California's biggest problems: our overburdened, dysfunctional corrections system, and the ever increasing multibillion dollar deficit. Implementing these proposals would save the state $7.5 billion in five years and improve public safety, so what are we waiting for? Over the last 20 years, California's corrections budget has increased by 450 percent. What are we spending all of that money on?
Here are three simple proposals to trim the waste and improve our corrections system.
These proposals are not only aimed at cutting wasteful spending; they are designed to improve public safety, bolster youth and drug rehabilitation programs that do work, and advance the long-needed adjustments to the California corrections system. The bottom line is California can save $7.5 billion in five years and improve public safety. — By Zachary Norris, Books Not Bars Director at the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights; Margaret Dooley-Sammuli, Drug Policy Alliance Deputy State Director, Southern California; and Natasha Minsker, ACLU of Northern California Death Penalty Policy Director
Save $1 Billion in Five Years — End the Death Penalty in CaliforniaIn the market for a prime piece of real estate? Governor Schwarzenegger has the deal for you! Facing a $21.3 Billion budget deficit in California, Schwarzenegger has offered to sell state-owned property to make up the difference. The crown jewel of the proposed fire sale is San Quentin State Prison, home to California’s death row and beautifully situated in the San Francisco Bay. But before he can flip San Quentin for a profit, Gov. Schwarzenegger will have to figure out what to do with the 680 condemned inmates who currently call it home. Fortunately, there is a solution. The best way to solve California’s budget woes would be to do away with the death penalty all together. By eliminating the death penalty, the state will save $1 billion in five years. And that’s not even counting the profit from selling San Quentin. California currently has the largest death row in the country and spends more than any other state on the death penalty. In the next five years, California can save $1 billion by getting rid of the death penalty. Here’s how:
Keep in mind that any attempt to “speed up” the death penalty will cost even more. The California Commission concluded that in order to reduce the time needed to review death penalty cases, the state would need to spend an additional $100 million each year. These figures don’t even take into consideration the windfall profits from selling off San Quentin, if anyone even wants it. But before death row can go on the market, Gov. Schwarzenegger will have to come up with an effective alternative for the inmates already living there. Luckily, California has such an alternative already in place — permanent imprisonment — which is just as safe as and so much less expensive than capital punishment. The money saved can be used to provide victims’ services or other crime prevention measures. And there would still be money left to help dig California out of this economic hole. Right now, Gov. Schwarzenegger can convert all of the current death sentences to sentences of permanent imprisonment, ensuring these inmates are kept off the streets forever and die in prison. Every guilty person sentenced to permanent imprisonment in California stays in prison until he or she dies, and it costs $175,000 less per inmate per year than a sentence of death by execution. Before selling San Quentin, the Legislature will also need to temporarily suspend any new death sentences until the state recovers from the current fiscal crisis so we don’t recreate the current problem. As an added bonus, suspending new death penalty trials would also save county budgets, which are in no better condition than the state budget. Each death penalty trial costs the local counties at least $1.1 million more than a trial where the district attorney seeks a sentence of permanent imprisonment. California currently averages about 20 new death sentences a year, so stopping death penalty trials could save counties an additional $100 million in five years. Of the many proposals Gov. Schwarzenegger has put before the voters and the legislature to rescue the state from financial meltdown — all of which have failed — none are quite as simple or reasonable as suspending the death penalty and saving $1 billion in five years. Since the Governor is now into real estate, he should know a “money pit” when he sees it. The longer he waits, the more money he wastes. To learn more visit www.aclunc.org/deathpenalty.
New Mexico Takes a Bold Step in the Right Direction, the Rest of Us Should FollowLast Wednesday, in a significant development in the national trend away from the death penalty, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson signed legislation that replaces the death penalty with permanent imprisonment in New Mexico. Gov. Richardson had been a life-long supporter of the death penalty, but was willing to reconsider in light of new facts and 30 years of problems with the death penalty. New Mexico became the 15th state without the death penalty, and the first in the continental western U.S. New Mexico isn't the only state taking another look at the death penalty. Bills to repeal, study or place a moratorium on executions are being considered in seven other states: Colorado, Illinois, Kansas, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, and New Hampshire. Why now? The nation's economic crisis has finally focused policy makers' attention on the question, is the death penalty really worth the costs? In California, we're setting new records for the unprecedented magnitude of our death row spending while our state budget crisis continues to worsen. California should serve as an unfortunate example of what not do, and how bad it can get. Last summer, a bipartisan panel of criminal justice experts concluded that California's death penalty — with 669 inmates at the time of their study — costs the state $125 million more than the alternative of permanent imprisonment. The Commission also found a serious, continuing risk that individuals would be wrongfully sentenced to death, and that the lengthy death penalty appeals process in California — now averaging 25 years — caused more pain and trauma to the family members of murder victims. The Commission concluded that the state has three options: (1) spend more than $250 million each year in an effort to improve the death penalty system; (2) drastically narrow the scope of the death penalty; or (3) replace the death penalty with life in prison with absolutely no possibility of parole. Almost a year later, California spends even more money on a more broken system. The ACLU of Northern California just released an updated report on the costs of the death penalty and how it is used across the state. This report reveals that in 2008, California's death row population increased by 11 prisoners, adding $1 million to the additional costs of housing on death row. Housing costs alone for the 680 people on death row now total $61.2 million a year. When the costs of mandatory appeals are included, the total price tag rises to $118 million each year above the costs of permanent imprisonment. Data from 2008 also reveals that just a handful of California counties are breaking from the statewide trend and sentencing an increasing number of people to die, creating huge burdens for the entire state to bear. In 2008, seven counties — out of a total of 58 — sentenced a combined total of 20 people to execution. Only five counties — Alameda, Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino — sentenced more than one person to death in 2008. These five counties are the only counties in the state that have sentenced more than 10 people to execution since 2000. Meanwhile, California's budget couldn't be in worse condition: pink slips continue to go out to teachers, and some counties contemplate laying off prosecutors and police officers, while we struggle to cope with a multibillion dollar budget deficit. Yet, in addition to throwing away $118 million each year on the maintenance costs of the death penalty, the state plans to spend $400 million for the construction of a new death row facility, $136 million of which is in this year's budget. Gov. Richardson's courageous step should be a wake-up call for leaders in the remaining death penalty states like California. We are at a crossroads: we can choose to follow New Mexico's lead, stop wasting precious resources on the death penalty and make our communities safer by replacing it with life in prison with absolutely no possibility of parole. Or, we can continue to throw money at a system that is prone to error and injustice and does not serve the needs of victims' survivors. After serious reflection, the choice was clear to New Mexico, and should be to the rest of us.
Prosecutors, Cops and Judges: Ready to Ditch California’s Death Penalty(Originally posted on the California Progress Report.) In opinion pieces that appeared in papers across California last year, former prosecutors, judges and law enforcement officers raised their voices to declare: enough already, it’s time to ditch the death penalty. Let’s consider what they had to say. Last April, Aundre Herron shared her unique perspective in the Sacramento Bee. Herron began her career as a prosecutor and later became a defense attorney. Yet, nothing in her professional life prepared her for the murder of her older brother Danny. As a result of what Heron calls a “legal technicality,” her brother’s killer was never convicted. She described the experience this way: Having served on both sides of the criminal justice system, the experience of losing my brother in this unforgettably tragic way, without recourse or retribution, forced me to re-examine the way "execution" and "closure" are joined in contrived alliance, recited by death penalty advocates to justify their point of view. But having survived my brother's murder without the "benefit" of the death penalty, it is clear to me that the death penalty cannot do what its proponents claim.Former prosecutor Darryl Stallworth came to the same conclusion but through a different path: by asking a jury to sentence a man to death for five gruesome murders. In July, Stallworth’s perspective appeared in the San Jose Mercury News. Stallworth spent 15 years as a prosecutor in Alameda County and considered it a promotion when he was asked to handle a death penalty case. But things changed as he actually worked on the case and learned about the horrific childhood of the defendant who began his life in the maternity ward of a prison. In Stallworth’s words: What crystallized for me during the trial was something I had slowly been realizing over my career as a prosecutor: I was witnessing a cycle of violence. . .Decades of experience with California’s death penalty also showed the “hanging judge of Orange County” that the death penalty is cruel--to the survivors of murder victims. In July, Judge Donald McCartin joined activist and actor Mike Farrell in an op-ed that appeared in the LA Daily News, calling for legislators to “bring an end to the wasteful, hypocritical, demeaning exercise of capital punishment, and replace it with the safer, cheaper, fairer sentence of permanent imprisonment.” They summarized the judge’s change of heart this way: Don McCartin, having sentenced nine men to death and then watched as the system examined, re-examined and finally overturned all of his convictions while executing none of them, now believes the death penalty is a hideously expensive fraud. It tortures the loved ones of murder victims by dragging them through the years of complex appeals required by the U.S. Supreme Court in an attempt to protect the innocent.For Jeanne Woodford, the former warden of San Quentin and former Director of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, it wasn’t the years of delays in death penalty cases but the experience of actually carrying out executions that shaped her perspective. In October, the L.A. Times published Woodford’s reflections: As the warden of San Quentin, I presided over four executions. After each one, someone on the staff would ask, "Is the world safer because of what we did tonight?" We knew the answer: No.Woodford said that the execution of Robert Massie “stands out among the executions I presided over as the strongest example of how empty and futile the act of execution is.” As Woodford noted, Massie is in many ways a “poster child” for the death penalty, having committed a second murder after being paroled from prison. She described the night of the execution and concluded: I did my job, but I don't believe it was the right thing to have done…. Massie needed to be kept away from society, but we did not need to kill him.For retired Police Chief Ray Samuels of Newark, California, it was both the outrageously high costs and the risk that we will execute an innocent person that persuaded him to change his mind on the death penalty after 33 years as a law enforcement officer in California. In December, his viewpoint appeared in the Contra Costa Times, Oakland Tribune and other East Bay papers: I used to support the death penalty, but my experience in law enforcement has showed me that California would be better off if we replaced the death penalty with permanent imprisonment...Despite the best intentions of law enforcement, prosecutors, defense attorneys, judges and jurors, innocent people have been convicted and sentenced to death. The margin for error with the death penalty is too great. Once imposed, it is a bell that cannot be unrung...Chief Samuels, like so many other prosecutors, correctional officer and judges, also believes that money wasted on the death penalty could be better spent making our communities safer: If the millions of dollars currently spent on the death penalty were spent on investigating unsolved homicides, modernizing crime labs and expanding effective violence prevention programs, our communities would be much safer.Together, these five individuals have more than 100 years of experience working to promote public safety, as prosecutors, law enforcement officers and a judge. Their professional and personal experiences are varied, their reasons are different, but their conclusion the same: it’s time for California to replace the death penalty with condemning the worst offenders to permanent imprisonment, and to invest the hundreds of millions of dollars saved into making our communities safe. Perhaps it is time we listen.
It's Official — California's Death Penalty is a Multi-Million Dollar Failure. Now What?A panel of experts, including 10 law enforcement officers and prosecutors, unanimously agrees that California’s death penalty is utterly broken. To fix it, we’ll need to spend over $200 million per year. The current failed system already costs over $137 million more each year than our alternative of permanent imprisonment. Today’s report forces all Californians to ask: how much we are willing to pay for our death penalty when we have an alternative that punishes criminals and protects our communities without making us bankrupt?
According to the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice — a bi-partisan blue ribbon panel created by the California Senate in 2004, which just issued the first ever comprehensive report on the state’s death penalty system — we have three options for dealing with our death penalty crisis. First, if we decide that we simply can’t part with a system that we now know drains critical resources from public safety budgets, puts innocent lives at risk, harms murder victim family members, and is applied unfairly, then we need to commit to spending over $200 million in tax dollars every year to make the system operational on the most basic levels. The Commission estimates that in order to make the system function, we would have to spend nearly $100 million more each year to pay for more prosecution and defense lawyers, and more court staff to handle the enormous volume of death penalty cases and appeals. When you add that to the money we already spend, it totals $217 million a year. On top of that, the State Auditor recently concluded that it will cost almost $400 million to build a new death row housing facility at San Quentin, on ground that is literally sinking into the sea. Considering California’s fiscal crisis, spending all of this money is not only unlikely, it’s impossible. And none of these proposed reforms would adequately address one of the most troubling flaws in California’s death penalty, the racial and geographic disparities that call the very fairness and justice of the system into question. Despite evidence and testimony from several researchers indicating that race and place play a significant role in determining who lives and who dies, proposed reforms to address these issues are noticeably lacking from the Commission’s report. Reforms that would begin to address those flaws would certainly cost more. Our second option, according to the Commission, is to acknowledge that we have the most extreme death penalty statute in the country, resulting in an insupportably large death row population, and that we can’t afford a system this big and bloated. We all agree that we want a criminal justice system that delivers justice fairly. The overwhelming demands of our current death penalty system, however, overburden courts, lawyers and public safety officials at every level, jeopardizing the foundations of our justice system. The Commission suggests that we could limit the number of crimes eligible for the death penalty in order to ease some of the burden. This would still cost more than $100 million a year, depending on how much smaller we make the “smaller death penalty.” While both of these options provide a healthy dose of reality about how large and unmanageable our death penalty is, the Commission report also highlights the fact that we already pay many millions of dollars on the current failed death penalty, and that a cheaper, more effective system is not only feasible, it’s already in place. Few people realize that condemning someone to permanent imprisonment costs California taxpayers millions of dollars less than sentencing him or her to death. We have had the option of permanent imprisonment for as long as we have had the death penalty, and it’s proven itself to be a more functional system that serves as a severe, but cost effective, punishment. Which brings us to our third option, according to the Commission: replace the death penalty with permanent imprisonment until death, and save millions of dollars for public safety programs that actually work to punish criminals, protect the public and help victims. This would cost us less than $12 million, a savings of more than $200 million a year over option one. The Commission does not come out and officially endorse this or any other option. In some sense, that’s a cop out. On the other hand, the Commission puts the decision right where it should be: in the hand of the voters. It’s time for those of us who are writing the checks to fund the system if to ask if it’s really worth the price. To read the Commission’s report, visit: http://ccfaj.org/rr-dp-official.html Learn more at aclunc.org/deathpenalty.
After 30 Years, California Examines its Dysfunctional Death PenaltyOriginally posted on Daily Kos. It's never too late. After 30 years of executions, the state of California is finally conducting an exhaustive review of the death penalty system. While the report will not be released to the public for another few weeks, the troubling evidence they reviewed is already known. Highlights include: extraordinarily high costs, an unacceptable backlog of capital cases, as well as racial, ethnic, and geographic disparities in sentencing—problems with the administration of the death penalty in California are in no short supply. The upcoming report by the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice (CCFAJ) will focus on whether it' possible to fix these problems, and if so, how much we will have to pay to implement the needed remedies. Bottom line, Californians will need to decide, is it worth the price? In preparation for this report, due out June 30, the commission conducted hearings across the state, hearing testimony from more than 70 witnesses and reviewing thousands of pages of written submissions, all highlighting a myriad of problems with California' death penalty. Expert testimony has raised the following concerns, among others:
We look forward to the commission' findings and encourage you to keep an eye out for this important assessment of the state of justice in California. For further background on the death penalty in California see Death Penalty Focus, California Crime Victims for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, and the ACLU of Northern California.
Death, Taxes...and Dry Cleaning?
Heads up, Californians. Your state's death row is a money pit, and the government is throwing tons of taxpayer cash into it despite a wealth of evidence that it is a bad investment.
On Friday, the ACLU of Northern California released two reports on the state's capital punishment system. The Hidden Death Tax reveals for the first time the exorbitant cost of death penalty trials. In its analysis, the report tallies up a total post-conviction prosecution and law enforcement bill of $117 million to California taxpayers every year. And it's no wonder the price is so steep, when you consider all of the hours prosecutors work on these cases. In the death penalty trial of Scott Peterson, for example, prosecution staff spent more than 20,000 hours on the case. In the death penalty trial of Rex Allen Krebs, prosecution staff spent more than 8,700 hours on the case. In the non-death penalty trial, prosecution staff logged only 1,600 hours. The report also finds that executing all of the people currently on death row, or waiting for them to die there of other causes,will cost Californians an estimated $4 billion more than if they had been sentenced to life in prison. In fact, merely housing prisoners on death row costs the state $90,000 more per year, per inmate, than housing them with the general prison population. The Hidden Death Tax also reveals some startling figures that you wouldn't expect to find on an expense sheet for prosecuting a death penalty case. But there it is, on Page 26 of the report, a dry-cleaning bill of $937.45, and a $387 worth of oil changes, car washes and smog checks. The second report, Death by Geography, looks at county-by-county disparities in death sentencing. For instance, the report finds that a resident of Alameda county is eight times more likely to be sentenced to death than a resident of nearby Santa Clara. And counties that sentence people to death do not experience lower homicide rates or higher rates of solving homicides. What pursuing a death sentence does do is waste money that could be used for important programs that are proven to effect positive changes in crime and violence, like hiring more teachers for the public schools or more CHP officers to stop drunk drivers. California's death penalty is arbitrary, ineffective and a waste of critical resources. What's that other familiar saying? Three strikes and you're out?
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