Public Speaks Out on Calif Lethal Injection

[mammastalkin]

Public speaks on Calif. lethal injection proposal



By PAUL ELIAS Associated Press Writer © 2009 The Associated Press

June 30, 2009, 3:08PM







SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Dozens of speakers lined up to speak Tuesday on California's new proposed rules for executing condemned inmates, but the public hearing quickly morphed into a debate over the morality and practicality of capital punishment.
George Husaruk and his wife drove two-and-a-half hours from their home near Willits to argue that California can no longer afford the death penalty.
"We need to use the money for education," the middle-school teacher said during a daylong meeting convened by the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to take public comment on its proposed lethal injection procedures.
The agency received more than 5,000 written comments in two months on the plan drafted in response to a federal court order in 2006. About 100 speakers signed up to speak at the hearing; most oppose the death penalty, and though the audience was warned to keep its comments focused on the proposal itself, the hearing soon expanded into a wider death penalty discussion.
Outside the hearing room, Father George Horan, a Catholic priest from Los Angeles, argued heatedly with death penalty advocate Howard Garber over whether life in prison without parole is a just sentence for heinous killers.
Many abolitionists have seized on the high cost of implementing the death penalty. A report released last year by a commission created by the state Senate and "using conservative rough projections" concluded that it will cost the state an additional $137 million a year to support the death penalty rather than making the maximum sentence life in prison without parole.
Garber and other death penalty supporters blame the high costs on the lengthy appeals process for the condemned. "Ninety percent of the appeals aren't contesting guilt," Garber said outside the hearing.
After Tuesday, the state will have up to a year to assess the public comments and edit the proposed procedures before they become official regulations. Only then will they be presented to U.S. District Court Judge Jeremy Fogel, who has suspended executions in California until prison officials fix the deficiencies he identified in the lethal injection process.
In 2006, Fogel halted executions until officials expanded the death chamber at San Quentin prison and provided more executioner training and other upgrades to ensure the condemned do not suffer cruel and unusual punishment.
The state has since constructed a new death chamber and the proposed regulations require execution team members to stage monthly mock executions. The rules would require three syringes, each filled with different drugs, to be administered by staff licensed to give injections in California. A physician must be on hand to declare death.
Even if the proposal passes legal muster, it would take at least a year to reinstate the death penalty.
Whatever is decided in California, which has the nation's largest death row at 680 condemned inmates, is expected to shape how other states carry out executions.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/...n/6505043.html

[lisainengland]

Yet again it seems that cost may be the reason they end the d/p but as long as they do I am happy. I think that the money could be used for much more useful things such as health or education. Surely teaching young people that violence solves nothing is better than using murder to try ( not suceeding) and deter it.!!!!!!!

[JJS811]

Agree Lisa. I don't care what reason is given for abolition as long as it happens. The money could be better spent on substance abuse programmes, and crime prevention, that would also cut the numbers going to prison in the first place.

[esteli]

The seeds are being planted and soon the tide will turn and the death penalty will be abolished due to economics. Brilliant, absolutely brilliant.