Recent Death Penalty News
DEATH ROW REALISM: Do executions make us safer? San Quentin's former warden says no. By Jeanne Woodford
As the warden of San Quentin, I presided over four executions. After each one, someone on the staff would ask, "Is the world safer because of what we did tonight?"
We knew the answer: No.
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LA VIDA Y LA MUERTE POR LA PANDILLA by Carlos Avilés, 2008-10-05, La Opinión
La pena capital para pandilleros divide las posiciones entre autoridades y organizaciones civiles.
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Appeals court to consider state's death penalty gridlock
SMALL STEP IN BATTLE OVER LETHAL INJECTION
By Howard Mintz, Mercury News, 09/18/2008
Five months after the U.S. Supreme Court offered a legal road map to states dealing with challenges to lethal injection, California is no closer to resuming executions on the nation's largest death row.
Today, however, the legal battle over lethal injection in this state will finally inch forward when an appeals court in San Francisco considers one of the two cases paralyzing California's death penalty machinery. While the hearing will not catapult the standoff over lethal injection in the state to a conclusion, it is a first step toward kick-starting a legal showdown that will decide whether the state's execution method can pass muster in the courts.
In particular, the 1st District Court of Appeal will hear arguments in the state's appeal of a Marin judge's order last fall that found that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's administration broke state rules when it adopted new lethal injection procedures. If the judge's order holds up, it could force the state to go back to the drawing board and hold public hearings before it can establish a new execution protocol.
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DEATH ROW COST OVERRUN: $40 MILLION
New San Quentin housing also could run out of room, report says
Matthew Yi, Chronicle Sacramento Bureau
Wed., July 30, 2008
The cost of new housing for San Quentin State Prison's growing number of Death Row inmates will exceed estimates by nearly $40 million, and the compound could run out of space soon after it is completed, according to a state auditor's report released Tuesday.
The auditor's new $395.5 million price tag for the project, which is expected to be completed by 2011, is new bad news for a state facing billions of dollars in budget shortfalls. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Democrat-controlled Legislature are still trying to hammer out a spending plan for the fiscal year that began nearly a month ago.
California's prison system is already a big-ticket item, representing about 10 percent of roughly $100 billion general fund spending. And with severe inmate overcrowding and claims of inadequate health care for prisoners, a federal receiver appointed by a judge in 2006 has asked the Legislature for an additional $7 billion to get the prison system to run adequately.
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Prisoners' time spent on death row doubles
by Kevin Johnson, USA TODAY
The time prisoners spend on death row has nearly doubled during the past two decades. Legal experts predict it will rise further as states review execution procedures and prisoners pursue lengthy appeals.
In California, wait times average nearly 20 years, a state commission report in June says. It costs about $90,000 more per year to house a death row inmate than other inmates.
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Activists: Halt death penalty in California
By Donald A. McCartin and Mike Farrell, 07/23/2008
WE are an unlikely pair - not "The Odd Couple," but close. Forty-five years ago, one was a successful lawyer practicing in Orange County, the other an aspiring actor living there because his new wife taught at Laguna Beach High School.
Two decades later, the lawyer, then a judge of the Superior Court, had sentenced more men to death than any other in his jurisdiction. He was known as "the hanging judge of Orange County."
The actor had gotten lucky, becoming a member of the cast of "M*A*S*H," one of the nation's most beloved TV shows, and was an ardent and outspoken opponent of the death penalty.
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