Monday, June 20, 2011

One More Reason California Is Broke--$308 Million For Each Death Row Execution

One California budget fix: Abolish death row
By Charles Riley @CNNMoney June 20, 2011:


NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Taxpayers have spent $4 billion since 1978 on California's capital punishment system -- and with only 13 executions to show for it.

That's about $308 million per execution.

2852PrintAnd without substantial changes, the state's total bill will expand to $9 billion by 2030, according to a new study by federal appeals Judge Arthur Alarcón and Paula Mitchell, his law clerk and a professor at Loyola Law School.

The situation is now so severe, voters must choose to pay higher taxes or abolish the death penalty, the authors say.

The study's release comes at a time when fiscal policy is a hot topic in California. And the state's $26 billion deficit is already hitting the criminal justice system.

Gov. Jerry Brown announced in April that he is canceling the long-planned construction of a new housing facility for condemned inmates at the state's infamous San Quentin prison.

With a backlog of 714 prisoners currently on death row, Alarcón and Mitchell call California's capital punishment system "dysfunctional," ....

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