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I like to call the death penalty a jobs program for lawyers, prosecutors and public defenders.
People who receive the death penalty routinely spend 20+ years in prison before being executed. The people what benefit hugely from this are the prosecutors, judges, and public defenders who are paid big bucks to work them thru the mandatory appeals process. This article says California has spent about $4 billion to execute 13 inmates. That is a cost of $307 million per execution. I suspect money paid to the the judges, prosecutors and public defenders involved in these state sponsored murders ate up a large amount of those costs. And of course that doesn't even address the issue that innocent people have been executed by the government and that more innocent people will be murdered by the government as long as the death penalty exists. Foes say death penalty is too costly By Paul Elias Associated Press Fri Nov 2, 2012 12:08 AM SAN FRANCISCO -- Death penalty opponents in California are trying a new argument this year: Abolish capital punishment because the cash-strapped state can’t afford it. Voters in the state with the nation’s largest death row will decide Tuesday whether to repeal the death penalty. Proponents of Proposition 34 say incarceration and litigation costs are too high for too little return. California has spent about $4 billion since capital punishment resumed in 1977, yet just 13 inmates have been put to death. An independent analysis says the state would save between $100 million and $130 million a year by converting death sentences to life without parole. “The death penalty is a giant rathole where so much of California’s budget is thrown with no discernible benefit,” said Diane Wilson, whose husband, a police officer, was killed by a man now on death row. A supporter of Proposition 34, she said the death sentence given to her husband’s killer “didn’t change anything. I still don’t have a husband, and my children and family are devastated.” Opponents say the argument is merely a smoke screen by opponents of capital punishment. “He deserves the ultimate punishment for what he did to my daughter,” said Marc Klaas, whose 12-year-old daughter, Polly, was abducted, raped and killed by Richard Allen Davis in 1993. Klaas, an outspoken Proposition 34 opponent, said that rather than do away with the death penalty, the appeals process should be streamlined. Three former California governors have spoken out against the initiative. One, Republican Pete Wilson, co-wrote the official argument that says the groups pushing Proposition 34 are most responsible for the high costs of housing death row inmates and paying for their appeals. |