S.A.F.E. was not the reason for the factual abolishment of the DP in Cali, it was Morales with his claim.
Printable View
S.A.F.E. was not the reason for the factual abolishment of the DP in Cali, it was Morales with his claim.
California's pro-death penalty vote a blow to EU hopes
While coverage of the US elections unsurprisingly focused on President Barack Obama's defeat of Mitt Romney, a ballot initiative in California to scrap the death penalty was closely watched by EU diplomats too. In the end, Californians voted by a margin of 53% to 47% to keep capital punishment on their statute books and reject a proposal to replace it with life in prison without the possibility of release. The pro-status quo result was a setback to the EU's long-standing campaign to end capital punishment in the US, where 3,000 prisoners remain on death row and where 43 people were executed in 2011. Opinion polls published in the run-up to the 6 November vote had predicted a victory for the 'yes' side. The EU Delegation in Washington declined to comment on the 'no' vote.
The EU opposes death penalty use in the US through three primary avenues. It bans the export of drugs that are commonly used for lethal injections, makes petitions to US states' governors to halt executions where the convicted person is mentally ill or potentially innocent, and funds grassroots anti-death penalty groups. According to Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Centre in Washington DC, the EU's efforts "have some effect". For example, they make US state authorities feel "embarrassed" when they have to scramble to obtain the drugs they need for lethal injections. The EU's petitions can influence US courts in setting standards on how the death penalty can be used, he added. While death penalty opponents lost the California referendum, Dieter said they were not that disillusioned as "the fact we came so close to winning was surprising".
Surveys show rising opposition to capital punishment among Americans. While just a few years ago as much as 80% of the US population backed its use, respondents in a recent survey from the Public Religion Research Institute were evenly split when asked to choose between the death penalty and life in prison without parole. Death penalty abolitionists have bolstered their support by stressing the high cost to taxpayers of keeping capital punishment on the statute books. In California, for example, they claimed that US$4 billion of taxpayer money had been spent on death row inmates since 1976, while just 13 people had been executed in that time. Capital punishment is still used in 33 of the 50 US states. Seventeen have abolished it, including five in the past five years. Texas executes more than any other state, 13 people last year.
There are presently 57 countries that still use the death penalty, while 141 have abolished capital punishment in law or practice, including all 27 EU member states. China executes more than any other country, estimated at several thousand a year, although Beijing does not disclose precisely how many. The world's other top executioners are Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia, followed by the US in fifth place.
http://www.europolitics.info/externa...344847-44.html
As one of the co-chairs of the No on 34 campaign, I researched all of the then 728 death row cases in California. Forty-three death row inmates killed law enforcement officers, including my youngest son. There were 226 children killed by death row inmates, including five children under the age of 23 months who died when their tiny bodies could not physically withstand being raped and sodomized. Over 90 victims were tortured.
The proponents of SAFE and the Yes on 34 outspent us 26 to one, but we prevailed. We now are going to work hard to fix our problems as we argued to the voters to amend it, not end it. We are waiting for justice and much work is ahead.
It infuriated me that millions in out-of-state money was funneled into the Yes on 34 folks. Fat cats from New York and Illinois should not determine what justice is for California or the thousands of victims of death row killers.