Should it stay or should it go??

"Should it stay or shold it go now? If it goes there will be trouble, and if it stays it will be double! So come and let me know!?" That is a question that the November Ballots in California will have on them addressing the state’s death penalty. The SAFE California Act qualified for the ballot after receiving 800,000 petition signatures, well over the required amount. The SAFE California initiative will be the first ever statewide vote to replace the death penalty with life in prison with no chance of parole. The SAFE California Act will save the state hundreds of millions of dollars. The initiative sets aside $100 million of the budget savings– $30 million a year, for three years – to solve open rape and murder cases.  

California is wasting so much money when it could be put to so many other uses. I am and have always been for the death penalty but agree with the SAFE California Act. The US Supreme Court has ruled that the death penalty is constitutional but there hasn’t been an execution in California for six years. With 725 condemned inmates living on San Quentin’s Death Row but no executions since 2006 how can anyone possibly think our states death penalty is “working”.  Jerry Brown says its working and he insists there are no innocent inmates on California’s Death Row but yet also seems to think that to make the death penalty work the state needs to spend more money on the defense lawyers.  It seems like the governments answer to what’s needed to fix a problem or make something work better, of ANY sort, is always “we need more money”. That’s the wrong answer and a line of BS that’s become the standard script for government to say and use as an excuse to not fixing anything. People don’t want to pay more taxes and California is already constantly cutting funding for this or that so when things don’t get fixed that’s the BS excuse we are given. “We need more money and just don’t have it” California would have more money if would do the opposite of that. By getting rid of the joke we call the death penalty here in California we would spend less money that could be used towards other things like solving the huge percentage of unsolved rapes and murders due to lack of funding of our police departments.

The life of a condemned person is very different from any other inmate. Death row protects its occupants from the perils of the prison yard and provides creature comforts denied to other inmates. Every effort is made to keep the condemned mentally and physically fit so that they may, with glaring irony, keep their date with the executioner. However, that execution date is uncertain. Death penalty trials in California take an average of 25 years to execution and more inmates die of old age or illness rather than fulfilling the public's mandate for their execution. Since California voted to reinstate the death penalty in 1978, our state has spent $4 billion to execute only 13 people. “These executions did not make us safer, nor has the lack of executions made us less safe,” says Aundre M. Herron who has worked as a lawyer on both sides of the criminal justice system.  WHATEVER! Is the response I have to her and all the others that use this as one of their defenses to abolishing the death penalty. If the states would take a more conservative stance similar to Texas or Virginia and actually execute the inmates that have been given the sentenced of death it would make us safer in two ways. #1 Murders and rapists might fear the justice system and there for not commit the crime. I know people are going to argue the other side to that comment and say that’s not true but I believe it’s true! Just like children who see someone/another kid getting a big trouble for something they did wrong; and they don’t want that (the punishment) to happen to them so they are more likely not to do whatever it was that got the other into trouble. #2 is that if instead of spending billions of dollars on the condemned for 25+ years; maybe if we followed Texas’s example of how their death penalty is run all that extra money could be used to fund programs that prevent crime (ex: youth clubs, after school programs), and protect us (ex: law enforcement, CPS) WE’D BE SAFER cause our communities would be safer.

One of the arguments against the death penalty is that once it has been administered the results are final and the case is over. What if an innocent person was put to death? How can we be sure they aren’t innocent? Does the state want the burden of finding out that the execution they’d carried out was of an innocent person? BLAH!? BLAH!? BLAH!? There is always talk around the fact that DNA testing has exonerated people convicted of crimes they didn’t commit and some of those have been on death row. More than 200 men and women have been wrongfully convicted of serious crimes in California, six of whom were sentenced to death. Here are some of their stories. People who are doing and being convicted of crimes today are being convicted with DNA proving their guilt so it seems to me we should be less worried about convicting innocent people now days and therefore should be less worried about killing an innocent person wrongfully convicted!!!

Then of course you can’t forget about our 8^th Amendment Right protecting us against CRUEL and UNUSUAL punishments inflicted on us. I’m totally for protecting our constitutional rights and making sure they are upheld and that government doesn’t abuse their position. BUT oh my God! How many court cases and Supreme Court Judges’ interpretations of cruel and unusual punishment is needed?

The United States Supreme Court decision in Furman v. Georgia, which declared Georgia’s procedure to be unconstitutional on the grounds that it was cruel and unusual punishment, essentially negated all death penalty sentences nationwide. Then it was re-instituted in the United States in the 1976 Gregg v. Georgia decision. Since this Texas has executed over four times more inmates than Virginia (the state with the second-highest number of executions in the post-Gregg era) and nearly 37 times more inmates than California (the state with the largest death row population)! On December 15, 2006, in the case Morales v. Tilton, Judge Fogel ruled that California execution procedures violate the 8^th Amendment because inexperienced, untrained prison staff do executions in crowded, poorly-lit settings; Fogel wrote that "implementation of lethal injection" by California "is broken, but...can be fixed. To him I ask, how can they (the prison staff) ever get the “experience” supposedly needed to execute a person and are you kidding me!!?? What kind of ambiance is needed for this special event???? Well there’s 700+ inmates on California’s death row so I’m thinking the inexperienced prison staff can get the experience they need by the time they carry out an 8^th of the sentences those 700+ have been given!!!! And just so it’s not unconstitutional based on lighting why not give the condemned prisoner the choice of how they’d like the room lit?? Last meal, last words, last choice of mood lighting?!

PEOPLE! Hello?! Capital punishment cannot be unconstitutional because the Constitution expressly mentions it and two centuries of Court decisions assumed that it was constitutional. There is so much information about all the cases regarding the 8^th Amendment and everyone has their own way to twist it to fit their argument on the death penalty including the Judges who take it away, give it back, put it on time out, make up new rules. It’s really hard to sort through it all so then why is it that those opposing the death penalty think they are right in saying it’s unconstitutional and those of us for the death penalty are always to have to prove that it is and jump through hoops to make sure killers are treated with a gentle hand at all times. Were their victims treated with such human regard? HELL NO! Give me a break! I could care less if they are in a little discomfort as they are injected with a cocktail that’s purpose is to make them comfortable in the few minutes before they are injected with that last lethal injection of the cocktail which the whole purpose of it is....TO KILL THEM! A heart attack is painful, an accidental drowning or burning to death is pure agony, cancer is painful and can make for a long and painful death, and the list of how people in the free world die every day. Get over it!

But in the world we live in, people can’t get over it, especially in California!! So as much as I am for the death penalty and think it’s so lame that we are a bunch of pantie wastes that care so much about criminal’s well being and comfort; I am 100% for the SAFE California Act and will be voting for its approval in November. If doing away with California’s death penalty, that I’d like to add is pretty much useless, will free up millions of dollars that are far more needed elsewhere (instead of wasting money on something that seems to me is unfixable, especially in such a liberal state) in our state then so be it. I can always move to a state that takes keeping convicted killers serious and carries out the sentences handed to them!!!!