A BALLOT proposal that could completely abolish California’s death penalty is already on life support.
The initiative would strike death as a possible punishment from the state’s Penal Code, substituting life imprisonment without parole. California state law currently allows for the death penalty.
“The death penalty in America may be living on borrowed time,” USA Today reported.
The ballot’s proponent, actor Mike Farrell, would have 180 days from when the secretary of state’s office enters the measure into circulation to collect the needed 365,880 signatures.
California has not executed a death row inmate in nearly a decade, with the last one being in 2006, according to The Sacramento Bee. Farrell’s initiative also stresses in calling the death penalty an “empty promise” that drains public resources.
“The state spends millions of taxpayer dollars providing lawyers for death row inmates, only to see the murderers it has sentenced to death by execution die of old age in prison,” the proposal reads.
In June, death penalty advocates who sued in Sacramento Superior Court in 2014 won a critical settlement when the state agreed to develop a new method for lethal injection executions, using just one drug.
Opponents of the death penalty argue that it will take more time and money drawing up a new procedure to restart executions in California, with many legal obstacles to face.
California currently houses the nation’s largest number of condemned inmates, nearly one-quarter of the more than 3,000 nationwide. The list also includes 21 women housed at a state prison in Chowchilla.
Other opponents say they doubt any more prisoners will be executed at all, as more voters turn against the practice and they continue to challenge the state in court at every turn.
Currently in California, nearly 20 inmates on death row are believed to have exhausted all appeals and be eligible for execution. However, the state lacks a court-approved way to kill them.
“There seems to be a massive reassessment underway in this country in terms of capital punishment,” said Kathryn Kase, executive director of the Texas Defender Service, which provides legal aid for those facing death row. “Everywhere you look with the death penalty, there’s a problem.”
Farrell’s ballot also points to the “fatal mistakes” of innocent people being carelessly sentenced to death as a reason to end capital punishment in California.
“Wrongful convictions rob innocent people of decades of their lives, waste tax dollars, and re-traumatize the victims’ families, while the real killers remain free to kill again,” the proposal said.
In 2012, California voters rejected a death penalty repeal–known as Proposition 34–by a 52 to 48 percent margin. Polls have consistently shown general public support for capital punishment.
A growing number of states– seven, since 2007–have already abolished the death penalty. Earlier this year, Nebraska, traditionally a conservative state, became the 19th state to ban capital punishment.
The federal government has not carried out an execution since 2003. An unofficial moratorium has been declared, pending the completion of a Justice Department review of the death penalty ordered by President Obama.
However, the average time spent on death row for those eventually executed continued to rise until 2011, with a peak of 16.5 years, before slightly dipping to 15.5 years in 2013.
