Save $1 Billion in Five Years: End the Death Penalty

In 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:

• Save $125 million per year by cutting extra costs of the death penalty—costs not incurred through permanent imprisonment. According to the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice, the annual cost of California’s death penalty to the state is $137 million. If the worst offenders were condemned to permanent imprisonment instead, the cost would be only $11 million and California would not be any less safe.

• Save $400 million in construction of a new housing facility for death row inmates. According to the State Auditor, this is how much it will cost to build a new facility at San Quentin, needed because the current facility is filled past capacity. And this is the state’s cost saving measure; building at any other site will be even more expensive.

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. Natasha Minsker is the death penalty policy director for the ACLU of Northern California. This article was posted May 25 at www.laprogressive.) ◘

Have you noticed the double standard in the way that women and men teachers are treated when they sleep with their students?

Do you feel that female teachers are treated differently than male teachers in those circumstances?

Gaile Owens was the first woman that my home state of Tennessee ever sentenced to death. She hired a man to kill her husband because of ongoing abuse and a general "bad marrage". I wonder if anyone has ever done a study on that; the effects of a bad marriage on a woman over time.

This article in the Nashville Post is one of the best Ive ever read on the case.

Email Michelle for .42 centes per email at www.accesscorrections.com

Tiffany Cole is the only woman on Florida's death row.
She is there for the kidnapping, torture, murder and robbery of a Florida couple.

She says that she was not aware that the couple were to be killed. She claims only to be a part of a robbery scheme. There were 4 other people involved in the scheme.

The prosecution says that Tiffany is the bonding factor in all these people. She is apparently the person who knew the couple originally, having followed the couple from North Carolina where she was a neighbor of theirs

I wrote to Michelle Byrom and Judy Neelley over the weekend.
Judy has been MIA for a while. Last I heard from her was a phone call on Christmas day 07.
She didn't return any letters after that and then I realized that she had been moved. She's been moved twice more and I'm having trouble keeping up with her.

She is in the news again. I can always tell when the ID channel runs the "Wicked Attraction" program featuring her and Alvin because my blog and site visitors goes way up- all from google searched on her.

She has garnered attention of her own this past month though because there was some media frenzy a while back because when her death sentence was commuted there was a chance of parole and everyone in the world got their pants in a wad over it. Just because she had a chance of parole doesn't mean anyone would ever give it to her. She had no delusions that they would. She has mentioned several times that she is fully aware she will die in prison.

They have revoked that chance at parole however.

Neelley Can no Longer Get Parole

Judys Not a Monster!

If you are against the death penalty does that mean you condone murder?
I was recently asked that question and it seemed totally absurd to me.

How could it mean that?

I am against the death penalty for one reason only.
I am against the death penalty because there are to many ways it can be wrong. To many way for it to go wrong. To many ways to regret it later.

I am not against punishment for the guilty.

If you are a proponent of the death penalty - aren't you condoning murder?