SAFE California Act, which aims to repeal state death penalty, to be placed on November ballot
By Jake Greenberg
March 8, 2012 8:06 a.m.
Californians will soon vote on the future of capital punishment in the state, after opponents of the penalty announced last week they have enough signatures to put an initiative calling for a ban on the death penalty on the November ballot.
The current push to abolish the death penalty is led by Savings, Accountability and Full Enforcement California which gathered almost 800,000 signatures to put the issue on the November ballot, said Ana Zamora, the assistant campaign manager for the SAFE California Act.
SAFE California needed only 504,000 signatures to make it to the ballot.
The initiative, known as the SAFE California Act, would make capital punishment in California illegal. It would replace the death penalty with life sentences for murderers without the possibility of being released.
In addition to repealing capital punishment, the SAFE California Act would invest almost $100 million over three years to help investigate serious crimes, such as murders and rape, Zamora said.
The death penalty has been at the pinnacle of debates surrounding the California justice system.
“California has been debating the issue of capital punishment since it (was reinstituted) in 1978,” said Stuart Banner, a professor at the UCLA School of Law who has written extensively on the death penalty. “Right now, there is a surge in people against the death penalty, but these things come and go.”
Banner said there are similar movements to abolish the death penalty in other states. The rate of executions has dropped significantly in the past decade, he added.
Zamora said she believes it is time for California to change how it deals with its prisoners.
“The death penalty system in California is irreparably broke,” she said. “It costs more, it is not preventative, and still, 46 percent of murders go unresolved in California.”
The process that comes before putting someone to death is often far more expensive than keeping the guilty person in prison for life, and California has spent about $4 billion since 1978 to execute 13 people, based on the California SAFE Initiative’s research, Zamora said.
“On average, a person sits on death row for 15 or 20 years before he is executed, and often times much longer,” Banner said. “So really, we have the cost of a half life sentence on top of the very expensive process of appeals and court procedure that precede an execution.”
James Kourafas, a third-year history student, said he expects to vote against the measure in November. He said the debate over the death penalty is ultimately one of personal morals, regardless of which conclusion a person reaches.
“(The death penalty) is about holding people accountable by demanding the most serious price for reprehensible actions, especially murder,” he said. “The death penalty is justice. It’s eye-for-an-eye and tooth-for-a-tooth.”
Kourafas said he thinks the death penalty works as a deterrent and keeps people from committing murder.
Banner said he agreed that people’s views on the death penalty are usually centered on their perception of morals, and that debates rarely change anyone’s minds.
“Deep down, a person’s decision about (capital punishment) is a personal one that depends on his upbringing and beliefs,” he said. “People often use the other reasons about economics and effectiveness to justify what they already believe.”
Nonetheless, the Undergraduate Student Association Council is planning to hold a debate next month about the death penalty, in light of recent news about the ballot measure, said Joelle Gamble, the external vice president of USAC.
