It's a sign that California is having second thoughts that a former prison warden is leading the campaign against the death penalty
During her tenure as warden of San Quentin prison, Jeanne Woodford presided over the executions of four prisoners. Now, as executive director of Death Penalty Focus, Woodford is leading the charge to pass a resolution known as Proposition 34, which would eliminate the ultimate punishment in the state of California. Woodford was never a death penalty enthusiast, but after witnessing her fourth execution, in 2002, she decided enough was enough. After each condemned man finally drew his last breath, she said, someone in the room who had witnessed the grim proceedings would inevitably ask the same question.
"Is the world safer because of what we did tonight? We all knew the answer was no."
Voters in California will get to have their say on Proposition 34 this coming November and if it is passed into law, it would make California the 18th state to turn its back on the death penalty (pdf). It would also be a significant victory for all those opposed to the concept of "an eye for an eye" justice. California has more prisoners on death row than any other state in the nation (over 714) and spends more on the trials and appeals that keep them there ($184m per year) than is comfortable for a state struggling to pay for essential services.
Yet, the proposal is being met with vehement opposition from death penalty advocates, including the office of the district attorney in Sacramento (pdf), on the grounds that some criminals have simply forfeited their right to live and that the families of their victims deserve closure. They believe that reforming the system by expediting the trial process and limiting the number of appeals is the better way forward.
Speeding up the trial process would, indeed, save money, but there is a pretty solid reason why trials take more time and effort when a death penalty is sought rather than life without parole. No one wants to see an innocent person put to death for a crime they did not commit. Several people have been executed despite serious misgivings about their culpability, and 140 people have been released from death row on evidence of their innocence. In California alone, six people on death row have been exonerated since 1976. If we truly believe that our court system should actually be about dispensing justice, then speeding up the process just to save money is not the way to go.
As to the other arguments, Woodford points out that life without the possibility of parole is a pretty stiff sentence by any measure. If the proposition passes, former death row inmates would be required to work in prison and some of their earnings would go toward victim restitution, a far better way of saving money than creating the opportunity for 20 years' worth of appeals. As regards families of victims, they do, of course, deserve closure and some may want that restitution in the form of an execution. But more often than not, by the time a death sentence is actually carried out, the circus of appeals, counter appeals, stays of execution and the inevitable drama that surrounds the event itself, do little to provide closure and much to make the perpetrator look like the victim.
This is pretty much how things played out with the fourth and final execution Woodford oversaw in 2002. The condemned man, Stephen Wayne Anderson, had been on death row for over 20 years before he had exhausted all his appeals. By then, he had reportedly become a reformed character in prison and was an award-winning poet. His appeals rested on the fact that the details of horrific abuse in his childhood, which would have impacted his sentencing, did not come to light during his trial. Surviving family members of his 81-year-old victim, Elizabeth Lyman, whom he shot dead in her home, reportedly said they did not want or need his execution. But the execution went ahead anyway, and it was no subdued affair.
Over 200 death penalty opponents braved the freezing temperatures to hold a candlelit vigil outside the prison as the lethal three-drug cocktail that would take 12 minutes to kill Anderson was injected into his veins. He waived the opportunity to give a final statement but mouthed the words "thank you" to his public defender, who said "I love you" three times before he slipped into unconsciousness and finally died. You can see why, after such an ordeal that benefited nobody, Woodford and other witnesses would come to the conclusion that the world was not safer because millions of dollars of public money and thousands of hours of attorneys' time were expended to ensure that one prisoner was put to death.
Heart-wrenching as Anderson's final hours were, they are fairly typical of what we've come to expect when a death row prisoner is finally executed. It is rare, in recent times, that a prisoner is put to death without some degree of public opposition. That often renders the prisoner a type of martyr, which must do little to console murder victims' families.
Still, the death penalty as an option is not going to be eliminated quietly in California, despite the fact that the extremely costly and controversial punishment currently exists in name only. (Since 2006, there has been a moratorium on executions because of challenges to the legality of the three-drug method.) In the past, Californians have overwhelmingly supported the death penalty. Recent polls suggest, however, that its popularity is waning and the public is starting to favor a sentence of life without parole – for moral reasons as much as economic ones.