California's capital punishment system is a disaster. It is yet another example of the collateral damage imposed by California's system of ballot initiatives. It is an injustice that only the voters can remedy.
These are just some of the conclusions I reached while completing an extensive research paper (pdf, Creative Commons license) for my seminar in capital punishment law. What I discovered only strengthens my conviction that California's system of ballot initiatives is little more than a tool for political manipulation, which should be abandoned or significantly reformed.
I, personally, am a death penalty abolitionist. I believe that capital punishment is impossible to justly administer, and represents a cruel and unusual punishment that has no place in modern society.
But regardless of one's moral views of the death penalty, it is clear that California's death penalty is in need of significant reform.
First, how is California's capital punishment system a disaster?
California: Largest Death Row in the Nation
California has the largest, most expensive death row in the nation. Because the state does not adequately fund defense counsel for death row inmates, it takes an average of 20-25 years to resolve a death penalty case to finality (compared to an average of 12 years among all death penalty states). The result of this delay is a death row consisting of at least 670 inmates, the largest of any death penalty state.
The marginal cost to house a death row inmate is approximately $90,000. This means that the state spends at least $63.3 million per year just to house its death row, compared to incarcerating the same inmates for life.
Moreover, there is strong evidence suggesting that the imposition of the death penalty in California is arbitrary, and that innocent people have been executed. In the landmark case of Furman v. Georgia, the Supreme Court of the United States held that a capital punishment scheme applied to only 20% of the death eligible class of offenders was per se unconstitutional. In California, only 11% of the eligible class are today sentenced to death. Reversal rates of California death penalty cases in federal court are at least 70%.
These statistics reveal a system in crisis. California's capital punishment system is costing taxpayers millions of dollars, yet producing unreliable, frequently unjust, outcomes -- the worst in the nation. California citizens must demand better.
Voter Involvement and the Initiative Process
Most of the problems with California's capital punishment system are the result of politician-sponsored ballot initiatives passed over the course of the last three decades. For the most part, these initiatives were used by their sponsors as publicity stunts, and were not motivated by any rational policy justifications. The measures have largely passed due to to the widespread use of fear tactics by their proponents.
The result has been the disjointed creation of a highly dysfunctional statute. The number of special circumstances qualifying a first-degree murder for the death penalty has increased from eleven in 1977 to 33 under the current statute. Moreover, the categories of first-degree murder have expanded from seven in 1977 to 21 today. The result of these expansions is a statute that does not adequately narrow the death-eligible class of offenders, nor distinguish the criminals most deserving of capital punishment. These benchmarks are at the heart of the Supreme Court's Furman decision, and are the minimum requirements that a statute must meet to avoid violating the Eighth Amendment.
Nearly all of the expansion of the California death penalty was the result of voter-approved ballot initiatives. Unfortunately, because California's death penalty scheme was largely implemented by ballot initiative, the state constitution requires that it be reformed at the ballots, as well. It is thus up to the voters to remedy the injustice of California's death penalty.
The only course of action that would not require voter approval would be to increase funding for both courts and defense counsel. This option might allow the state to begin clearing its large backlog of death penalty cases, but it is estimated that it would cost an additional $95 million per year to properly fund, for a total cost of $216.8 million per year to taxpayers.
Yet even this option would not remedy the structural flaws in the statute, which lead to the arbitrary, unjust outcomes and high reversal rates in federal courts. Regardless of funding levels, these problems will persist until the voters take action to fundamentally reform California's death penalty laws.
More Information
- Chris Haumesser, Death by Initiative: California's Experiment With Direct Democracy and Capital Punishment, (c) 2009, offered under the Creative Commons BY-NC-SA License.
- California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice, Official Recommendations on the Fair Administration of the Death Penalty in California (June 30, 2008).
- Death Penalty Information Center
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