For the first time since 1978, California voters may be able to decide whether to keep the death penalty as the harshest way to punish murders. The initiative needs slightly more than 504,000 registered voter signatures to qualify for the November ballot. Organizers collected more than 800,000 signatures and turned them into the secretary of state’s office for verification.
If approved, the Savings, Accountability, Full Enforcement Act would amend the death sentences of the state’s 725 Death Row prisoners to life in prison without parole and abolish the death penalty as an option in murder cases.
“(This) will put an end to its intolerable risk and exorbitant cost,” said Jeanne Woodford. “California voters are ready to replace the death penalty with life in prison with no chance of parole.”
Woodford once headed California’s prison system. She was also a San Quentin warden and oversaw four executions. She now heads the anti-capital-punishment group Death Penalty Focus.
California has had 13 executions since restoring capital punishment in 1978 – prompting even some leading death penalty supporters to question its feasibility. “I don’t think it is working. It’s not effective. We know that,” said state Supreme Court Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye.
A 2011 study found that the state spends $184 million a year on death penalty cases and incarceration. That same study, by U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Arthur L. Alarcon and Loyola Law School Professor Paula M. Mitchell, reported that taxpayers have spent more than $4 billion on capital punishment since it was reinstated in 1978.
