NO TO PROP 62, YES TO PROP 66: LIES BY ANTI DEATH PENALTY ACTIVISTS OF CALIFORNIA

            Whenever an Anti-Death Penalty campaigner claim that capital punishment is more expensive than LWOP, please keep in mind, they are the reason why the death penalty system is expensive.

We, the comrades of Unit 1012, are truly well aware that once the death penalty is abolished, the ACLU Demons will want to end LWOP.

            We, the comrades of Unit 1012: The VFFDP, DO NOT TRUST them at all and we know that they are nothing but liars who value the lives of murderers and evildoers, with the plan on putting innocent people’s lives at risk of getting murdered. These Anti-Death Penalty Activists are all the ACLU Demons.

  

INTERNET SOURCE: http://www.politifact.com/california/statements/2016/sep/21/tom-steyer/did-california-spend-5-billion-execute-13-people/

"Since 1978, California has spent $5 billion to put 13 people to death."

— Tom Steyer on Wednesday, September 14th, 2016 in a press release.

Did California spend $5 billion to execute 13 people?

By Chris Nichols on Wednesday, September 21st, 2016 at 6:00 a.m.

California billionaire and potential gubernatorial candidate Tom Steyer joined the debate over ending the state’s death penalty last week by repeating a questionable claim.

"Since 1978, California has spent $5 billion to put 13 people to death," Steyer said in a press release announcing his support for Proposition 62.

The measure would abolish capital punishment in the state.

Proposition 66, a competing measure on November’s ballot, would keep the death penalty but proposes speeding up its appeals process.

There’s no doubt California’s death penalty system is slow and expensive: But $5 billion to execute 13 people? We decided to fact-check that suspect claim.

Our research

There are more than 700 people on California’s death row, which the Yes on 62 campaign has correctly claimed is the largest death row in the Western Hemisphere.

The state has paid incarceration and court costs for all of those inmates, not just the few that have been executed since California reinstated the death penalty in 1978.

Steyer based his ‘$5 billion to execute 13 people’ claim on information from the Yes on 62 campaign, according to his spokesman. The campaign has made the death penalty’s high cost a central part of its argument for abolishing executions.

The Yes campaign made the same claim as Steyer in a September 12 Facebook post.

It published a more accurate and nuanced statement on its website: "Since 1978, California taxpayers have paid $5 billion to maintain the death penalty and death row, and executed 13 people."

The Yes on 62 campaign says it extrapolated the $5 billion estimate from a report by California’s Loyola Law School in 2011 that placed the cost of the state’s entire death penalty system at $4 billion.

One of the report’s authors, Paula Mitchell, told PolitiFact California that the $5 billion figure is her updated estimate for how much state and federal taxpayers have spent on California’s entire death penalty system since 1978, not just on cases for the 13 people who have been executed.

Mitchell said Steyer and the Yes on 62 campaign left out this key context in their claims.

"I think the way to fairly characterize the expense is to say we’ve spent $5 billion on a system that has produced only 13 executions since 1978," said Mitchell, who heads Loyola’s Project for the Innocent and is an adjunct professor.

Representatives for the No on 62 campaign rejected the claim by Steyer, noting costs are spread across "a much larger number of cases." They also called the $5 billion estimate in Mitchell’s report "a wildly inflated number."

Wildly inflated?

We dug a bit deeper to examine whether Steyer not only wrongly attributed the entire cost of the death penalty system to 13 cases, but also used a "wildly inflated" cost estimate.

Mitchell, who is an advocate for abolishing capital punishment, said she’s worked with the Yes on 62 campaign to discuss death penalty cost estimates.

She said her estimates are derived from the cost of pre-trial investigations, trials, appeals and incarceration. Her report cites figures from the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice, among other sources.

Frank Zimring, a law professor and death penalty expert at UC Berkeley, said he’s relied on the report in the past and finds the cost estimate credible, "give or take a hundred million or so."

Cost comparison

Mitchell’s said her current $5 billion cost estimate represents the amount taxpayers spent "above what it would have cost us" without the death penalty. Her report could not reach a conclusion, she said, on how much a life in prison system would have cost taxpayers over the same period.

On average, it cost $47,000 per year to incarcerate a prison inmate in California during the 2008-2009 fiscal year, according to the Legislative Analyst’s Office.

The cost to house a death row inmate, however, is $90,000 more per year than for an inmate in the general prison population, said Mitchell. She attributed the higher cost to lengthy and complex death row court cases.

Death penalty court cases cost more than others, in part, because more attorneys are legally required to participate and more investigation is required. Costs also mount because death penalty appeals must be heard by the California Supreme Court, which has only seven justices. That creates a bottleneck, Mitchell said, where each case can stretch a decade or more.

Without the death penalty, Zimring said the cost of trials and appeals would be "vastly less."

Our ruling

Tom Steyer said recently: "Since 1978, California has spent $5 billion to put 13 people to death."

But that cost has been spread over hundreds of cases since 1978, not just the 13 that led to executions.

California currently has more than 700 inmates on death row. Prosecuting and housing each costs the state significantly year after year.

Steyer’s claim might have been correct if he had said taxpayers have spent $5 billion on a system that’s resulted in 13 executions.

Instead, his words leave the impression California paid the entire $5 billion for a fraction of its hundreds of cases.

We rate Steyer's claim Mostly False.

INTERNET SOURCE: http://www.eastbaytimes.com/2016/09/10/commentary-death-be-not-proud-prop-62-just-as-cruel/

Commentary: Death be not proud, Prop. 62 just as cruel

By John Purugganan

PUBLISHED: September 10, 2016 at 9:00 am | UPDATED: September 8, 2016 at 8:03 pm

California’s Proposition 62 is a decree of death, anguish and inhumanity. No form of execution is acceptable, not even in a presumed attempt to choose the lesser of two evils.

California voters need to know that lethal injection is arguably a more humane method of execution than the alternative method Prop. 62 proposes: Life without the possibility of parole (LWOP) — the slow death penalty, life without hope.

The European Court of Human Rights ruled that life without the hope of parole is inhumane; they outlawed the practice. No-parole sentences are extremely rare in the rest of the free world — fewer than 120 estimated cases — because being forced to exist with the absence of hope is cruel and unusual punishment; only the truly irredeemable are denied parole.

In the U.S., where we have an unprecedented 50,000 LWOP inmates, it’s no wonder the suicide rate among them is incredibly high.

Voters who oppose the death penalty as inhumane should realize that what Prop. 62 would accomplish is simply to add to the growing number — 5,000 men and women in California — of those already enduring this hopelessly cruel form of execution.

Prop. 62 would effectively seal the fate of current California LWOP prisoners, and kill the scant hope produced by Senate Bills SB9 and SB260, which made parole possible for LWOP juveniles.

LWOP seniors, who have served decades behind bars and have proven their rehabilitation, and have long been engaged in the struggle to abolish life without the possibility of parole sentences, were afforded a glimmer of hope. A hope Prop. 62 is proposing to quash.

Special circumstances stand on very technical elements of crime that distinguish prison sentences of life with parole and life without.

In fact, LWOP prisoners used to have parole hearing dates, an opportunity to demonstrate their rehabilitation. The grim reality of Prop 62 is that LWOP prisoners “are never eligible for parole. They spend the rest of their lives in prison and they die in prison.”  As written in Prop. 62, the word “never” is strategically underlined, an added detail to attract the unions that benefit from mass incarceration and long-term sentences. Phrases such as “severely punished” were added to please those haters who thrive on the pain and suffering of others. No ink was wasted on the word “rehabilitation.”

The death penalty does not need this misguided initiative. The death penalty is dying and has been on its way out for some time now. Voters should beware of the glory grabbers who are misrepresenting Prop. 62 in a misguided attempt to seize the moment before it’s too late to claim credit for championing the end of the death penalty.

The advent of Prop. 66 was a stroke of luck for those pushing Prop. 62. Prop. 66 basically proposes to speed up the death penalty process. If passed, it is unlikely to pass court challenges. Not a single soul would perish because of Prop 66. But it serves as the perfect diversion for the sleight-of-hand trick that’s being performed on the unsuspecting public with Prop. 62.

The attention junkies will have their moment at any cost. They don’t appear to care about the men and women who will die slow, tortuous deaths in prison because of Prop. 62, nor the families of those incarcerated.

They do not seem to be interested in the research and studies that conclude the majority of the safest inmates overall were once those considered to be the most dangerous.

Of the 860 people convicted of murder who were released between 1995 and March 2011, only five were returned to prison — none of them for murder, attempted murder, or assault and/or battery.

This is from the California Department of Corrections own 2011 Adult Institutions Outcome Evaluation Report. Prisoners are not a greater risk to public safety simply because they carry a
sentence of life without parole. In most cases the “worst of the worst” eventually become the “safest of the safe.” In regard to parole and release from prison, aging LWOP prisoners are even less likely to commit a violent crime than the average person on the street.

As an LWOP prisoner, I wish more people would look into these studies that were conducted by Stanford Law School, by the Justice Policy Institute, by the Public Police Institute of California, by Human Rights Watch, by the Vera Institute.

Life without hope/possibility of parole is not the answer to the death penalty. This inhumane sentence has become an epidemic that is perverting the American justice system across the nation.

The ACLU has reported that upward of 3,200 U.S. citizens are serving LWOP sentences for non-violent crimes.

Public beware: The vainglorious Proposition 62 is a lethal farce, and a slap in the face of humanity.

John Purugganan is a writer and was convicted of murder in 1995. He is currently in California State Prison-Los Angeles County in the 26th year of a sentence of Life Without Parole.