www.sacbee.com/opinion/story/2446534.htmlFriday, January 8, 2010
Bruce Maiman
Popular Comment
‘Let us abolish the death penalty currently occurring at a rate of 4,000 innocent human lives every day through abortion, yet somehow we comfortably accept that as simply a woman's "choice" or worse yet, a woman's right-to-kill-her-own-child. I agree that intentionally and brutally killing human life is never an appropriate solution, but when will the anti-death-penalty advocates join me in opposing abortion, the ultimate crime against innocent humanity and the most lethal form of child abuse?’
Viewpoints: Another nail in death penalty's coffin
Buzz up!By Bruce Maiman
Special to The Bee
Published: Friday, Jan. 8, 2010 - 12:00 am | Page 13A
Capital punishment is one of those subjects where everything that needs to be said has pretty much been said by anyone who's got anything to say about it. People for it or against it have pretty much dug in their heels, rarely budging from their positions.
That's why it's astonishing that the American Law Institute this week officially decided to abandon its longtime support for the death penalty – an institution of our criminal justice system that this group helped shape.
This is a stunning sea change. The law institute is one of the most respected organizations in the country and perhaps the most influential organization in shaping the contours of American criminal law.
This organization of some 4,000 lawyers, judges and law professors represents the only group able to put together an intellectual argument and a rational model for the application of the death penalty.
But since doing that in 1962, it has now conceded, almost 50 years later, that the evidence draws a different conclusion: That the capital justice system in the United States is, in fact, capricious, racially unjust, unreliable and incapable of assuring us that the innocent will not be put to death in error.
That last point should be the ball game from an intellectual point of view. If the death penalty exists as the ultimate punishment for people who exact the ultimate price – killing someone – what do we do if we kill somebody by legal execution who is not guilty? After examining the available data and considering all the arguments, the law institute concluded no such guarantee is possible, even given the DNA era in which we live.
Understandably, the rational question arises: If DNA evidence can prove who is innocent, why can't it also prove who's guilty beyond reasonable doubt? In reality, many capital cases don't involve the kind of physical evidence amenable to DNA testing.
The same errors that arise in cases where DNA evidence has exonerated a death row inmate – faulty eyewitness testimony, unreliable jailhouse informer testimony, coerced confessions, and withheld evidence – can just as easily arise in cases in which DNA evidence is unavailable. Of the 139 death row inmates exonerated since 1973, DNA played a significant role in establishing innocence just 17 times.
And then there's cost. The law institute noted that it's actually more expensive to execute someone than it is to put them in jail for life. That seems counterintuitive, but in state after state, death penalty cases cost two to three times more because of the time and effort required in preparation and evidence gathering to prove beyond a reasonable doubt. Indeed, the greatest cost associated with capital cases occurs prior to and during trial, not in post-conviction appeals.
Even if all post-conviction proceedings were abolished, the death penalty would still be more expensive than alternative sentences.
That's why California spends nearly 90 percent of its capital punishment budget at the trial level. We spend $137 million annually to manage our capital punishment system, yet a 22-member blue ribbon commission concluded that it would take an additional $96 million to provide sufficient and constitutionally guaranteed legal counsel at trial.
That's why cases take so long to go to trial, prosecute and appeal. Buried by heavy caseloads, public defenders can't give prompt, adequate attention to their clients. When's the last time you heard someone say there aren't enough lawyers? The commission found that the alternative of life without parole would only cost taxpayers $11.5 million.
Even in Texas, a favorite model among death penalty advocates, a capital case costs an average of $2.3 million, about three times the cost of imprisoning someone in a single cell at the highest level for 40 years.
Dozens of states, meanwhile, are spending hundreds of millions of dollars across decades and executing no one. California reinstituted the death penalty in 1978. First execution: 1992. Number of inmates executed: 13. Money well spent? Hardly.
Even so, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger last year OK'd construction of a new death row at San Quentin for a price tag that eventually reached $400 million. For what? To house 670 death row inmates at twice the cost of inmates in the general population?
What we should do is close the place, abolish the death penalty and sell the Bay Area land on which the facility now sits.
If the state releases a significant number of its nonviolent offenders – as a federal court has ordered – it leaves room to disperse the San Quentin population throughout the state's other 32 prison institutions. That means fewer prisoners and fewer overtime hours for state workers. The California Correctional Peace Officers Association will have to bite the bullet like everyone else.
But good grief, would it not make more sense to stop spending money we don't have for a system we don't use? If the governor is really serious about shifting funding to higher education, why not raise an additional $2 billion to $3 billion by selling San Quentin – a facility whose primary purpose is to execute prisoners in a system that its chief intellectual architects now say has failed.