In his column on the death penalty, “Another nail in death penalty’s coffin” (Viewpoints, Jan. 8), Bruce Maiman cited increasing cost and the American Law Institute’s recent decision to oppose the death penalty as reasons for the state to abolish the death penalty in California. <\/p>\n
Maiman argues that, according to the American Law Institute, California’s death penalty is capricious, racially unjust and unreliable. Therefore, he concludes, we should close San Quentin, abolish the death penalty and sell the Bay Area land on which the facility exists. <\/p>\n
Admittedly, California’s death penalty is not perfect and probably could never be reformed to the extent that it could always be applied in a fair and just manner. The problem, however, with California’s death penalty is its inability to carry out executions following convictions and sentences. California leads the nation with more than 600 inmates on death row, but only 14 have been executed since the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1978. A person sentenced to death in California is more likely to die of old age or natural causes than to be executed. <\/p>\n
The opponents of the death penalty, in calling for its abolishment, ignore the victims of murderers and the right of society to protect itself from future crimes by convicted murderers. There have been cases in California of persons sentenced to death who were subsequently paroled only to murder again. I have personal knowledge of such cases. <\/p>\n
As a result of highly publicized murders by murderers released on parole, California voters have consistently voted to support the death penalty. Originally restored by voters’ initiative in 1977, every subsequent measure to expand the provisions of the death penalty, most recently the gang-murder special circumstance in March 2000, has been overwhelmingly approved by the voters. <\/p>\n
Because of the judicial system’s failure to approve executions, the death penalty in California has become a de facto life-without-possibility-of-parole sentence. While California’s death penalty is far from perfect, there are some crimes that are so egregious that any punishment less than death would be inadequate as a matter of basic justice. There are also certain situations where the death penalty may be morally required to prevent the taking of an innocent life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In his column on the death penalty, “Another nail in death penalty’s coffin” (Viewpoints, Jan. 8), Bruce Maiman cited increasing cost and the American Law Institute’s recent decision to oppose the death penalty as reasons for the state to abolish the death penalty in California. Maiman argues that, according to the American Law Institute, California’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4325,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-220855","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220855","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4325"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=220855"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220855\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=220855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=220855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=220855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}