and the costs to hold those prisoners for the rest of their lives? to feed them, to provide them a habitable bed, cleaning supplies, medical health as they age and start to need more care?
[1] https://ballotpedia.org/Fact_check/Is_the_death_penalty_more...
Edit: after reading the article seems like a no-brainer, CA is not executing anyone anyway, so why maintain the fiction:
> The decision to spare death row inmates is largely symbolic in a state that has not executed an inmate since 2006, though experts say it could save millions of dollars in court costs each year. Only 13 inmates have been executed since voters reinstated the death penalty in 1978.
The state is usually paying for the prosecution and defense as well as the court staff in these hearings.
Relative to California's law enforcement and judicial budgets required to investigate, arrest, try and convict them in the first place? Irrelevant noise. That's just a silly argument.
(There's also the whole moral thing about "we should kill people because it's too expensive to keep them alive", but even so, the financial thing just doesn't logic.)
In the U.S. the state has never been an arbiter of life and death. A jury of peers decide that.
In a state where we struggle to house people, home prices are exploding through the roof, who bears the costs to hold those prisoners for the rest of their lives? to feed them, to provide them a habitable bed, cleaning supplies, medical health as they age and start to need increasingly more care?
> The decision to spare death row inmates is largely symbolic in a state that has not executed an inmate since 2006, though experts say it could save millions of dollars in court costs each year. Only 13 inmates have been executed since voters reinstated the death penalty in 1978.
He’s a politician for sure. Make a big scene out of nothing.
And all the while, it really changes nothing about the status quo of executions in the state, they weren't going to happen before this commutation, and they won't happen after.
Accusations of hypocrisy generally only work if they're coming from inside the house. Basically, if you know that I already disagree with you on a fundamental level, you're not going to trust that I have a deep enough grasp of your position to point out a real inconsistency.
A lot of them still aren't aware that the death penalty costs so much more because of the intense appeals process.