Transcript
Al Cunningham Box E—22600 San Quentin, CA 94974 NO MORE DEATH PENALTY After a A year study, the independent, non-partisan California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice published their findings on the death penalty system in CA. It concluded that the “system is plagued with excessive delays in the appointments of counsel for direct appeals and habeas corpus petitions...and that the failures 511 the administration of California's death penalty law create cynicism and disrespect for the rule of law, increase the duration and costs of confining death row inmates, weaken any possible deterrent benefits of capital punishment, increase the emotional trauma experienced by murder victims’ families and delay the resolution of meritorious capital appeals...” The Commission outlined 4 alternatives: $137.7 million to maintain the current dysfunctional system, $216.8 million to reduce the length of the process to 12 years, $121 million for a more narrow death penalty or $11.4 million to replace the death penalty with ‘terminal confinement’. {Seems like an obvious choice to us]. 10 of the commissioners filed supplemental statements calling for an outright repeal of the death penalty. Recently New Jersey undertook the same kind of examination and ended up abolishing its whole death penalty system. The time has come for California to end the death penalty once and for all.
