Just a news story I wanted to pass along...
This is very good news, and I hope the budgetary argument can win over enough people so we can vote to abolish the death penalty!!
From the BBC:
(all emphases mine)
Voters in California are to be asked whether they want to abolish the state's death penalty law.
The measure will appear on November's ballot after more than 500,000 people signed up to back the proposal.
The measure would see death row inmates have their sentences commuted to life. Just 13 people have been executed since the law was re-introduced in 1978.
Backers say abolition could save California $100m (£62m) per year, but opponents say justice would be harmed.
"Our system is broken, expensive and it always will carry the grave risk of a mistake," said Jeanne Woodford, a former warden of San Quentin Prison, home to the largest death row unit in the US.
Ms Woodford is now an anti-death penalty advocate and is named as the official proposer of the measure, which is backed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
Data from the Death Penalty Information Center shows that at the start of the year the state had 723 inmates on death row. The US as a whole had 3,189.
But no inmate has been put to death in California since 2006, and a respected study in 2009 noted that the state was spending some $184m each year to keep death row and the death penalty infrastructure up and running.