Death Penalty

Thousands Say NO to Lethal Injection, For a Second Time!

Thank you to the thousands of individuals who took action against California’s broken death penalty system by objecting to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s flawed lethal injection procedures. Over 12,000 individuals and a wide range of organizations across the country submitted their objections to the CDCR’s new execution plan, which is part of an effort to kick-start executions in California.

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A Season for Activism
The League of Women Voters of Palo Alto in conjunction with the Santa Clara Coalition for Alternatives to the Death Penalty sponsored a forum on November 17th with guest speakers Natasha Minsker of the ACLU of Northern California and Judy Kerr, Spokesperson for California Crime Victims for Alternatives to the Death Penalty. These two women spoke to an attentive audience about the impacts of the death penalty on our local communities, and discussed effective ways to get involved in the struggle to end the death penalty in Santa Clara County.
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Texas Executed an Innocent Man Just Five Years Ago
Despite evidence that he was innocent, Texas executed Cameron Todd Willingham on February 17, 2004. He had been convicted and sentenced to death for supposedly setting a fire that killed his three children in 1992. From the beginning, there was reason to believe that the fire was an accident, but state officials refused to consider that evidence.
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Updated Reports: California Still the Highest Spender on the Death Penalty
ACLU of Northern California released a new report revealing that California continues to spend more money on the death penalty, even while fewer counties actually send anyone to death row. Only five counties--Alameda, Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino--sentenced more than one person to death in 2008, setting themselves apart as the five most active death penalty counties in the state. The population of California's death row has grown by 11 in one year, to a total of 680 people, adding almost $1 million to the annual cost of housing people on death row.

The new report updates last year's groundbreaking reports, The Hidden Death Tax: The Secret Cost of Seeking Execution in California and Death by Geography: A County By County Analysis of the Road to Execution in California.
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Frequently Asked Questions About the Costs of California's Death Penalty
Many people are surprised to learn that it costs more to sentence someone to execution than permanent imprisonment, also known as life without parole. This page draws key findings from the ACLU-NC's report The Hidden Death Tax: The Secret Cost of Seeking Executions in California to answers some common questions about the costs of California's death penalty system.
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