Death Penalty might be on its way out in California

There are currently 17 states that have abolished the death penalty, five of which have done so in the last five years.  Soon, depending on what happens in California, that number might rise to 18.

According to the Los Angeles Times, a ballot measure calling to replace capital punishment with a life term without possibility of parole was qualified on Monday for the California general election in November.

Part of the reason for the push for repeal has nothing to with human rights and everything to do with the price tag.   A recent three-year study concluded that the death penalty cost Californians $183 million more to administer than life without possibility of parole, most because of the additional expenses of legal costs for mandated appeals and trials and for housing inmates in single cells. It doesn’t help that California has only actually executed 13 inmates in 23 years; making prisoners more likely to die of old age than by the executioner.  

There are currently 700 people on death row that might have their sentence commuted to life without possibility of parole, although the ballot measure might come too late for the 14 who have exhausted their appeals process.  However, executions were recently suspended when a federal drug cited the possibility that prisoners may suffer extreme pain with the current three-drug procedure