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Thread: California Death Penalty Referendum (SAFE California Act)

  1. #1
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    California Death Penalty Referendum (SAFE California Act)

    Quote Originally Posted by Slayer View Post
    Is anybody on here worried about this effort to scrap the DP in CA?:concern:
    I am a little bit! That is a lot of bad apples to put in general population.

  2. #2
    Senior Member Frequent Poster PATRICK5's Avatar
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    No. Two thirds of Californians support capital punishment.

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    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by PATRICK5 View Post
    No. Two thirds of Californians support capital punishment.
    Hopefully the issue will be important enough for the 2/3's to vote. The abolitionists are going to put on one hell of a campaign.

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    Banned TheKindExecutioner's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Heidi View Post
    Hopefully the issue will be important enough for the 2/3's to vote. The abolitionist are going to put on one hell of a campaign.
    They have a brand new death chamber that they've never used in Cali

  5. #5
    Senior Member Frequent Poster PATRICK5's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Heidi View Post
    Hopefully the issue will be important enough for the 2/3's to vote. The abolitionist are going to put on one hell of a campaign.
    Since it's on the Nov ballot, they shd get a larger turnout which will favor those who support the DP

    http://media.sacbee.com/smedia/2012/...KLhi7.Xl.4.gif

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    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    Hopefully, retentionists will mount an effective advertising campaign. All that really needs to be done is to repeatedly and unflinchingly spotlight some of the crimes committed by those on California's death row. Certainly, there are those perpetrated by the more notorious murderers: notably, Rodney Alcala, Richard Allen Davis, Scott Peterson, Charles Ng and Richard "the Night Stalker" Rodriguez. Plus, as I've mentioned previously on this thread, if you look at the murders committed by the various denizens of death rows across America, the ones in California seem to be, by and large, the worst. There don't seem to be many guys in California under a death sentence for botched hold-ups. There does, however, seem to be a surfeit of multiple murders, child murders and murders involving rape and other prolonged brutality.

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    Banned TheKindExecutioner's Avatar
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    Heidi, I'm glad you say Cali voters will uphold capital punishment.

    The voters have to care!

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    Administrator Michael's Avatar
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    California death penalty ban qualifies for November ballot

    SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- A measure to abolish California's death penalty qualified for the November ballot on Monday.

    If it passes, the 725 California inmates now on Death Row will have their sentences converted to life in prison without the possibility of parole. It would also make life without parole the harshest penalty prosecutors can seek.

    Backers of the measure say abolishing the death penalty will save the state millions of dollars through layoffs of prosecutors and defense attorneys who handle death penalty cases, as well as savings from not having to maintain the nation's largest death row at San Quentin prison.

    Those savings, supporters argue, can be used to help unsolved crimes. If the measure passes, $100 million in purported savings from abolishing the death penalty would be used over three years to investigate unsolved murders and rapes.

    The measure is dubbed the "Savings, Accountability, and Full Enforcement for California Act," also known as the SAFE California Act. It's the fifth measure to qualify for the November ballot, the California secretary of state announced Monday. Supporters collected more than the 504,760 valid signatures needed to place the measure on the ballot.

    "Our system is broken, expensive and it always will carry the grave risk of a mistake," said Jeanne Woodford, the former warden of San Quentin who is now an anti-death penalty advocate and an official supporter of the measure.

    The measure will
    also require most inmates sentenced to life without parole to find jobs within prisons. Most death row inmates do not hold prison jobs for security reasons.

    Though California is one of 35 states that authorize the death penalty, the state hasn't put anyone to death since 2006. A federal judge that year halted executions until prison officials built a new death chamber at San Quentin Prison, developed new lethal injection protocols and made other improvements to delivering the lethal three-drug combination.

    A separate state lawsuit is challenging the way the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation developed the new protocols. A judge in Marin County earlier this year ordered the CDCR to redraft its lethal injection protocols, further delaying executions.

    Since California reinstated the death penalty in 1978, the state has executed 13 inmates. A 2009 study conducted by a senior federal judge and law school professor concluded that the state was spending about $184 million a year to maintain Death Row and the death penalty system.

    Supporters of the proposition, such as the American Civil Liberties Union, are portraying it as a cost-savings measure in a time of political austerity. They count several prominent conservatives and prosecutors -- including the author of the 1978 measure adopting the death penalty -- as supporters and argue that too few executions have been carried out at too great a cost.

    "My conclusion is that he law is totally ineffective," said Gil Garcetti, a former Los Angeles county district attorney. "Most inmates are going to die of natural causes, not executions."

    Garcetti, who served as district attorney from 1992 to 2000, said he changed his mind after publication of the 2009 study, which was published by Judge Arthur Alarcon of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and law professor Paula Mitchell.

    Opponents of the measure, such as former Sacramento U.S Attorney McGregor Scott, argue that lawyers filing "frivolous appeals" are the problem, not the death penalty law.

    "On behalf of crime victims and their loved ones who have suffered at the hands of California's most violent criminals, we are disappointed that the ACLU and their allies would seek to score political points in their continued efforts to override the will of the people and repeal the death penalty," said Scott, who is chairman of the Californians for Justice and Public Safety, a coalition of law enforcement officials, crime victims and others formed to oppose the measure.

    The Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, meanwhile, remains one the biggest backers of the death penalty in the state and opposes the latest attempt to abolish it in California. The foundation and its supports argue that federal judges are gumming up the process with endless delays and reversals of state Supreme Court rulings upholding individual death sentences.

    The foundation on Thursday filed a lawsuit seeking the immediate resumption of executions in California. The foundation's lawsuit, filed directly with the state Court of Appeal, argues that since the three-drug method has been the subject of so much litigation -- and the source of the execution delays -- a one-drug method of lethal injection like Ohio uses can be substituted immediately.

    Source
    No murder can be so cruel that there are not still useful imbeciles who do gloss over the murderer and apologize.

  9. #9
    Senior Member Member Unsub's Avatar
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    I am looking forward to the vote. I think it will be a close call, i see that a lot of juries go for LWOP instead of DP when offered the choice. So as a anti i have some hope. But it might come to soon for abolishment, 10 years from now abolishment would have a bigger chance, since the new generations are increasingly more liberal.

  10. #10
    Senior Member CnCP Legend JLR's Avatar
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    As a resident of Britain not overly familiar with the American political system, can someone explain to me what actually has to happen for this to pass via this ballot thing?

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