Recent Death Penalty News
Death penalty and race: Scales of justice may weigh heavily against blacks
Statistics indicate sentence meted out highly selectively.
By Claire Cooper - Special to The Bee, July 6, 2008
For Bill Babbitt, a black man, the question comes down to this: Why did Sacramento County condemn his brother Manny to death for killing a white woman but sentence his cousin Butchie's white killer to a year in jail?
"I'm looking at all these murders that have occurred, hundreds, and I'm thinking, how did Manny's name come up?" says Babbitt, who witnessed his brother's execution by lethal injection in 1999.
How did Manuel Babbitt become one of the 827 first-degree murderers chosen for California's ultimate penalty? The same question is being asked, in effect, by a state commission that tried to learn whether race or other inappropriate factors have been determining who gets the death penalty and who does not.
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California's death penalty process is 'dysfunctional,' panel finds
July 1, 2008, LA Times
California's administration of the death penalty is "close to collapse" and would require massive new state spending or changes in sentencing laws to end decades of delay and dysfunction, a state commission reported Monday.
The findings, by the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice, grew out of the first comprehensive look at the state's death penalty in the 30 years since capital punishment was restored in California.
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Costs soar for new death row at San Quentin
Wed June 11, 2008 6:45am EDT
The project is likely to require nearly $400 million, not $220 million. It will have fewer cells than planned, and some prisoners may have to share space.
SACRAMENTO —Ground has not yet been broken on a new death row proposed at San Quentin State Prison, but the projected cost of the project has soared by nearly 80% for a compound that could be full only three years after it opens, according to a critical audit released Tuesday.
If the facility is built as now envisioned, some condemned inmates would have to reside in cells with others rather than be imprisoned separately as they are now, State Auditor Elaine M. Howle reported.
Howle's audit details the delays and changes to the $220-million plan that state lawmakers authorized five years ago to house 656 male inmates facing the death penalty. Those prisoners are now scattered across several antiquated, rundown buildings without modern security features.
The current projected cost is more than $395 million to build 768 cells instead of the 1,024 first planned. The cost per cell, projected at $515,000, has more than doubled. Beyond November, every month of delay will cost an additional $2 million.
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EU condemns U.S. resumption of executions
Wed May 14, 2008 6:45am EDT
BRUSSELS (Reuters) — The European Union on Wednesday condemned the resumption of judicial executions in the United States and said abolishing capital punishment was fundamental to protecting human dignity and furthering human rights.
The U.S. state of Georgia executed convicted murderer William Earl Lynd on May 6, the first person to be put to death in the United States since the Supreme Court ended a de facto moratorium on capital punishment last month.
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