Tax money pays for inmates’ comfort
By Megan Perry
With elections just around the corner, students need to take a look at some important propositions that could change California’s future.
On the ballot this year is a state measure that would eliminate capital punishment in California.
Proposition 34 says it will repeal the death penalty and replace it with life imprisonment without the possibility of parole, applying retroactively to existing death sentences.
I say go right ahead. It’s about time California came to its senses and decided to abolish the stone-age law of capital punishment.
Why does California waste its time trying to scare criminals from committing atrocious crimes that would receive the death sentence when it really doesn’t work?
Criminals are not deterred from committing capital crimes because of the death sentence, yet the death row population seems to grow each year.The death penalty is California’s way of seeking revenge on some of its most heinous killers and criminals.
California convicts the killers and sentences them to death. California is killing killers.
Does that make sense? I thought the eye-for-an-eye law went out with horses, carriages and the wooden wheel.
According to California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, California houses 726 inmates on condemned status with 298 affirmed death sentences, but only 13 criminals have been executed in the last 34 years.
More people have died of old age on death row than have actually been executed for their punishment.
Since 1978, California has spent more than $4 billion on administering the costs of death row inmates.
California tax dollars pay for hardened criminals to sit in private rooms with TV sets, radios and cellphones as they await their execution date.
California needs to quit wasting money making these criminals comfortable during their last days and should throw them in a prison cell to rot in for the rest of their days.
The inmates on death row are the murderers who plotted to kill their victim in the most vicious way possible, or the rapists who chose to do inappropriate things to those who didn’t want anything to do with it.
Killing these people is only giving them the easy way out.
Injecting them with the lethal injections or allowing them inhale lethal gases keeps them from feeling the pain the victim had to go through, or worse, the victim’s family.
These criminals are getting off too easy. They need to sit in a dank cell and think about their actions. They need to feel the guilt resonate within their souls.
The death penalty provides these crazed criminals with an escape from the pain life brings. This is why constituents need to get to the polls on Nov. 6 and vote yes on Proposition 34.
A yes vote would mean these too-comfortable criminals would now be moved from a cozy private life imprisonment into the general population.
Proposition 34 says it will have an ongoing state and county criminal justice savings of about $130 million annually within a few years, along with a one-time state cost of $100 million for local law enforcement grants.
If Proposition 34 passes, it would direct $100 million to law enforcement agencies for investigations of homicide and rape cases.
California has thousands of homicide and rape cases, and the passing of Proposition 34 would take the focus off of the criminals’ execution and place it on the victims.
Let’s rid ourselves from this archaic law and look forward to a different tomorrow with a yes vote cast on Proposition 34.