Californians Will Vote on Competing Death Penalty Measures This November

This post is a collaboration between Countable and our partners at CALmatters.

The death penalty is one of the most divisive issues in American politics, and California voters will have an opportunity to choose whether the death penalty remains legal in their state by voting on two competing propositions this November 8.

What the Propositions Do

Proposition 62 would repeal the death penalty in the state of California and replace it with life imprisonment without the possibility of parole as the maximum punishment for murder. All prisoners sentenced to life in prison without parole would be required to work to pay restitution to the victims’ families with 60 percent of their wages earned in prison and the new rules would apply to convicts who are already on death row.

Proposition 66 would keep the death penalty in place while speeding up the appeals process. The proposition would put trial courts in charge of initial appeals of death penalty convictions, require appointed attorneys to work on death penalty cases and cap the duration of death penalty case reviews. It would also apply to convicts already on death row. The proposition would also require all prisoners sentenced to life in prison without parole to work to pay restitution to victims’ families with 70 percent of their wages earned in prison.

Propositions 62 and 66 cannot both be enacted into law, so if both pass, the proposition with the most votes will win.

Anti-Death Penalty

Prop. 62 ensures that convicted murderers serve a strict life sentence and abolishes a failed and biased death penalty system that has cost the state $5 billion since California reinstated the death penalty in 1978. It ensures that not a single innocent person would be wrongfully executed.

Prop. 66 will cost taxpayers millions of dollars, add layers of government bureaucracy that will lead to more delay, and increase the risk that California executes an innocent person.

Pro Death Penalty

Abolishing the death penalty under Prop. 62 would allow the most brutal murderers to be fed and housed for life on the taxpayer dime. Prop. 62 jeopardizes public safety, denies justice and closure to victims’ families, and rewards the most horrible killers.

Prop. 66 fixes California’s flawed death penalty system and ensures due process protections for those sentenced to death. By maintaining the state’s death penalty, it promotes justice for murder victims and their families.

In Depth

Since the 1978 reinstatement of the death penalty in California, just 15 of the 930 individuals who received a death sentence have been executed. Another 103 have died prior to being executed, 64 have had sentences reduced by the courts, and 748 remain in prison. The numbers illustrate the lengthy time inmates spend waiting for the courts to appoint attorneys for them, for their cases to be heard, and going through an exhaustive appeals process intended to protect the innocent.

Meanwhile, California has not carried out an execution since 2006 because of legal issues surrounding the state’s lethal injection procedures. A federal judge blocked a 2006 execution because of concerns that suffering from the state’s lethal injection drugs could constitute "cruel and unusual punishment." The ruling has held up executions in the state ever since.

In 2012, 52 percent of California voters rejected Proposition 34, which is very similar to Prop. 62. It, too, would have abolished the death penalty and replaced it with life in prison without parole. Two years later a judge invalidated the state’s death penalty, arguing that long waits in the state constituted cruel and unusual punishment, but the U.S. Court of Appeals overturned that ruling because of procedural issues with the original decision.

The death penalty is currently permitted in 30 states, and lethal injection is the primary execution method. Twenty other states have abolished the death penalty, with five doing so in just the last seven years. An additional four states have governors that imposed moratoriums on carrying out the death penalty, so that while the practice remains legal, it isn’t used.

Read more at CALmatters.
Map by Death Penalty Information Center