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April 24th, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda
California could join 17 other states and the District of Columbia without
capital punishment, assuming the Connecticut law goes into effect.
“It’s unusual and could be historic. I don’t think any state has removed
the death penalty through referendum since the 1960s. That was Oregon. They
(later) reinstated it,” said Richard Dieter, executive director of the
Death Penalty Information Center.
“In most states, it’s a legislative process,” he added.
Illinois, New Mexico and New Jersey have all chosen to abolish the death
penalty in recent years, and New York’s death penalty law was declared
unconstitutional in 2004.
Other state legislatures are considering bills to end the death penalty, and
Oregon’s governor has said he would halt all executions on his watch.
But opponents of the measure, which would commute the sentences of the state’s
existing death row inmates to life in prison, amounted to an assault on
victims of what they described as the most vicious crimes in California.
“The individual who qualifies for the death penalty under special
circumstances has done a lot more than just kill somebody,” said
Assemblyman Jim Nielsen, a Republican from northern California who is the
former chairman of the California Board of Prison Terms.
He said that abolishing the death penalty on the issue of cost would amount to “spitting
in the face of the grieving victims of these vicious heinous atrocious
murderers.”
A Gallup poll taken last year found that a majority of Americans – 61 per cent
– approved of using the death penalty for those convicted of murder,
although support was down from a peak of 80 per cent in the mid-1990s.
Similar support was evident in California, where a poll by the state’s Field
Research Corporation last year found 68 per cent supported capital
punishment for serious crimes.
Scott Thorpe, CEO of the California District Attorneys Association, has said
reforms to the appellate process could reduce costs associated with
executions. He could not be reached for comment on Monday.
In addition to abolishing the death penalty, the California measure would also
create a $100 million fund to be distributed to law enforcement agencies to
help solve homicides and rapes.
It would also require convicted murderers to work in prison, and would apply
their wages to any victim restitution fines or orders against them.
State Senator Loni Hancock, a Berkeley Democrat who backed a bill in 2011 that
would have placed a similar measure on the ballot, said the initiative would
give voters the chance to eliminate a punishment that is rarely carried out
and costs $184 million a year more than life imprisonment of the same
felons.
Tax money is being spent on death penalty appeals while community colleges and
libraries face cuts, Hancock said. At the time it was approved, she said, “people
really didn’t understand, and still may not, the cost implications of the
death penalty.”
A spokesman for California Governor Jerry Brown could not immediately be
reached for comment.
Source: agencies
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