The Worsening Economy Has At Least One Upside, In My Mind

Well, for me at least, there is one good thing coming from this depression-recession-economic crisis, and that's the news that more states are abandoning their use of the death penalty to save money.

The argument is no longer right or wrong, just or unjust, it's dollars and cents.

As I've been telling people forever, it costs less to keep someone in jail for life than it does to execute them. According to recent surveys, it's tens of millions of dollars cheaper.

I have always been staunchly anti-death penalty, coming from an early basic idea that if it's a crime to murder someone, then putting them to death for that same crime is no difference. I have been to anti-death penalty protests in California; they were few and far between thankfully, but there were enough to make me mad, and make me want to add my voice to the argument.

And now an increasing number of states are considering abolishing capital punishment in favor of life imprisonment, not on principle but out of financial necessity. Donald McCartin, a former California jurist known as "The Hanging Judge of Orange County" for sending nine men to death row, says, "It's 10 times more expensive to kill them than to keep them alive," though most Americans believe the opposite. Why has "The Hanging Judge," of all people, changed his mind? It's a 'waste of time and money.'

In California, for example, the appeals process can take, on average, twenty years. Of the nine men that McCartin sent to death row, only one has died; and not by execution, but from a heart attack while in custody.

Way back in '07, time and money were the reasons New Jersey became the first state to ban executions since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976. Governor Corzine commuted the executions of 10 men to life imprisonment without parole. Legal costs were too high and produced no result; an estimated $4.2 million was spent on each death sentence, and yet the state has executed no one since 1963.

On a side note: not putting someone to death also eliminates the possibility of putting an innocent person to death. The justice system tries hard, but it does make mistakes, and we've all heard and read about innocent men and women being incarcerated for years before it's discovered they are innocent.

Even one person executed, and later found innocent, is too much.

Also, eliminating capital punishment eliminated the risk of executing an innocent person. There are still 36 states with a death penalty, but at least eight are considering legislation to end it.
While dollars are the reason behind the new change in anti-death penalty legislation there is also the fact that many men, and women, in prisons, have recently been cleared because of DNA evidence that was unavailable, or never introduced, at trial.

Some of the worst cases occurred in Illinois. In 2000, then-Governor Ryan placed a moratorium on executions after 13 people had been exonerated from death row for reasons including genetic testing and recanted testimony. Ryan declared the system "so fraught with error that it has come close to the ultimate nightmare, the state's taking of innocent life."

Taking of innocent life? That's called murder. Ryan subsequently commuted the sentences of all 167 death row convicts, most to life imprisonment without parole, and his moratorium is still in effect. Now, onto the money side of things, because all decisions, it seems, are based on money.
Death penalty trials are more expensive than any other trial. They require extra lawyers; there are strict experience requirements for attorneys, leading to lengthy appellate waits while capable counsel is sought for the accused; security costs are higher, as well as costs for processing evidence—DNA testing, for example, is far more expensive than simple blood analyses.

And then after a guilty verdict, costs continue to soar. It costs more money to house death row inmates because they are held in segregated sections, in individual cells, with guards delivering everything from daily meals to toilet paper. In California, for example, which has the nations largest death row population, it costs an extra $90,000 per inmate to imprison someone sentenced to death—it totals to more than $63.3 million annually for a state on the verge of financial collapse. Many Californians are asking Governor Schwarzenegger to stop the executions, especially now, as service cuts and tax increases are pegged to fill a $42 billion budget hole.

Sadly, Schwarzenegger doesn't seem ready to abandon capital punishment anytime soon.

But nationwide the number of death sentences has declined over the last ten years, from 284 in 1999 to 111 in 2008. Of course, as with every hot-button issue, the reasons behind the decline differ greatly.

Pro-death penalty activists say it's because crime rates have declined and execution is a strong deterrent.

Anti-death penalty activists say it's because jurors and judges are reluctant to risk taking a life when future scientific tests could prove the accused not guilty.

And executions are dropping, from 98 in 1999 to 37 in 2008.

I like the idea that the death penalty is, or may be, fading out of favor. I don';t like the idea that my name is used to kill someone; think about, 'the people of the State of fill in the blank sentence you to death."

Well, no one asked me, because I would have not put my name on that list.

Now, before we all get up in arms, and fight about the rightness or the wrongness of the death penalty, let's just think of it in terms of saving money. States can use that money to create new jobs, and stimulate their economy; to pay tax refunds they cannot, right now, afford.

And before anyone comes at me with the argument about someone killing my family and wouldn't I want then put to death, the answer is no. Putting someone to death would not bring my family back; it would not give me closure; it would not make me happy.

Putting someone in a tiny room,with no rights and no privileges until the day they die, would be closure for me; because they'd spend every single day of the rest of their life knowing that they have no life because they took a life.

Sounds fair to me.