August 31, 2011 | 11:28 AM | By

Would you vote to end the death penalty?

FILED UNDER: Capital Punishment, Corrections

CDCR

Questions persist about California's lethal injection process.

In California, many decisions about the criminal justice system have been left to–or have been commandeered by–the voters through the initiative process. The death penalty is one such major issue. Capital punishment had already been reinstated by the legislature the year before, but in 1978, California voters affirmed their commitment to capital punishment by passing Proposition 7.

Since then, there has been constant debate about the efficacy and fairness of executing people–and now, with an endless fiscal crisis, questions about whether keeping the death penalty is worth its financial cost.

On Monday, a coalition of capital punishment abolitionists, including former San Quentin Warden Jeanne Woodford, former Los Angeles District Attorney Gil Garcetti, and a host of civil rights organizations, announced that they’ll bring a measure to the ballot in 2012 that if enacted, would end the death penalty in California.

Is California ready? The above audio, an episode of Pat Morrison’s KPCC show, asks that question. The episode features Don Heller, who wrote Proposition 7, but has since changed his mind about capital punishment, and Kent Scheidegger, of Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, who supports the death penalty.

  • Karen Topakian

    I would absolutely vote in favor of ending the death penalty in California. Though I am not sure that a ballot initiative is the best route to making this a reality. That said I would surely vote for it.

  • Anonymous

    i would vote in favor to keep the death penalty in CA and ask that they change the appeals so it dose not take 20yrs to kill these scum bags