KNOW THE FACTS: California Death Penalty Fact Sheet

We pay hundreds of millions of dollars to maintain the death penalty system

Poor quality defense leads to many death sentences

There is a better alternative

The death penalty puts innocent lives at risk. We know that four innocent men have been executed in recent years. Sam Milsap, the prosecutor who sent Ruben Cantu to death row, now realizes that Texas made a mistake in executing the 26 year old man in 1993. In St. Louis, the district attorney opened an investigation to determine if the state executed an innocent man when Larry Griffin was put to death in 1995. New evidence shows that Cameron Todd Willingham and Carlos De Luna, both executed in Texas, were likely innocent. In California, six wrongfully convicted people have already been freed from death row. Since the reinstatement of the death penalty, 123 men and women have been released from death row across the United States.

Race and place are key factors in determining who lives and who dies. The first statewide study on racial and geographic disparities in the imposition of the death penalty in California was released in 2005, with disturbing findings. A person whose victim is white is three times more likely to be sentenced to die as a person whose victim is African-American and four times more likely than a person whose victim is Latino. A person convicted of first degree murder in a rural, predominately white county is three times more likely to be sentenced to death than a person convicted of a similar offense in an urban, diverse community. (09-21-05, New Study Finds that Race and Place Play a Key Role in Death Sentencing in California)

We pay hundreds of millions of dollars to maintain the death penalty system. A 1993 California study found that each death penalty trial costs $1.25 to 2 million more than a regular murder trial. In 2005, the Los Angeles Times reported that California spends $57.5 million more every year to house people on death row than would be spent if all of those people were sentenced to life without parole. That means we spend an additional $90,000 per inmate each year simply to house people on death row. These expenses do not include the costs of appeals. The death penalty will always cost more than life without parole.

Poor quality defense leads to many death sentences. The San Jose Mercury News reported in 2002 that two out of every three death sentences in California are reversed on appeal. Inadequate defense is one of the top reasons leading to reversal. Minimum standards for defense counsel in death penalty cases only took effect recently. Most people currently on death row did not have attorneys who would qualify under these standards.

There is a better alternative. In California, we have the option of sentencing convicted murderers to permanent incarceration. Once sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, prisoners are not released unless it is later discovered that they are in fact innocent. Since California began sentencing people to life without parole in 1978, not one person has been released except for those innocent people who were wrongfully convicted.