Proposition 7

The seventies in California were the time of the Ron Reagan governorship, conservative politics in what was believed to be a liberal state and a flurry of California’s infamous propositions on the ballot. One of the most stridently conservative propositions, passed in 1978, pushed and expanded California’s death penalty, making the state among the toughest in the United States. But $4 billion later and running an annual tab of $185 million (during the greatest budget crisis the state has ever faced), the same conservative sponsors of that initiative – Proposition 7 – are thinking that the state’s experience with the death penalty suggests that the time for this radical punishment is over; it’s just too expensive.

Prisoners linger on death row for years as the appellate process (automatic in death penalty cases) winds on, sometimes for decades. The prisoners are in special housing, and, when the day for retribution arrives, it is a massively expensive process that locks down the entire prison. “The [original Prop 7] campaign was run by Ron Briggs, today a farmer and Republican member of the El Dorado County Board of Supervisors. It was championed by his father, John V. Briggs, a state senator. And it was written by Donald J. Heller, a former prosecutor in the New York district attorney’s office who had moved to Sacramento… Thirty-four years later, another initiative is going on the California ballot, this time to repeal the death penalty and replace it with mandatory life without parole. And two of its biggest advocates are Ron Briggs and Mr. Heller, who are trying to reverse what they have come to view as one of the biggest mistakes of their lives… Partly, they changed their minds for moral reasons. But they also have a political argument to make.” New York Times, April 6^th.

The notion of swift justice evaporated in the above legal process, and the people of California (and any other American jurisdiction that has the death penalty) are paying vastly more to execute these felons than they would to incarcerate them for life. Not to mention the occasional “innocent” who was wrongly convicted along the way. The process is so tedious that only 13 California prisoners have actually been executed over the past 34 years. Are the taxpayers safer as a result of the death penalty or is it more “an eye for an eye” retribution that makes this ultimate punishment so popular? A Field Poll conducted last summer notes that Californians are overwhelmingly supportive (68%) of the death penalty for very serious crimes. It will be exceptionally difficult to reverse this initiative, even though the arguments in favor of abolishing the death sentence are beyond compelling.

“‘At the time, we were of the impression that it would do swift justice, that it would get the criminals and murderers through the system quickly and apply them the death penalty,’ Mr. Briggs, 54, said… ‘But it’s not working… [My] dad always says, admit the obvious. We started with 300 on death row when we did Prop 7, and we now have over 720 — and it’s cost us $4 billion. I tell my Republican friends, ‘Close your eyes for a moment. If there was a state program that was costing $185 million a year and only gave the money to lawyers and criminals, what would you do with it?’ ’..

“But Ron Briggs and Mr. Heller bring to this campaign a powerful and evocative story: a bid for personal redemption and a call for renewed consideration of the arguments they themselves once made in favor of the death sentence… ‘It’s been a colossal failure,’ Mr. Heller said in his Sacramento office. ‘The cost of our system of capital punishment is so enormous that any benefit that could be obtained from it — and now I think there’s very little or zero benefit — is so dollar-wasteful that it serves no effective purpose.’” NY Times. In the end, regardless of moral predispositions, we need to pay what we can afford and find efficient solutions for our public safety. There is little in the way of pragmatic value to the death penalty anymore. It’s time to kill that ultimate punishment.

I’m Peter Dekom, and for those advocates of the death penalty, perhaps an annual tax surcharge of $1000 for every supporter is the viable alternative.