By Voice staff

Hundreds of Californians attended a June 30 hearing in Sacramento to weigh in against new execution procedures and the financial costs of maintaining the death penalty system in the state.

“The government is wasting money trying to come up with a new way to execute people while teachers, law enforcement and health care workers are being laid off,” said Natasha Minsker, death penalty policy director for the ACLU of Northern California, in a statement the morning of the hearing.

Death penalty opponents believe the state would save $1 billion in five years if Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger would convert all death penalty sentences to sentences of permanent imprisonment until death.

“With $1 billion, we could keep crime labs working in places like Los Angeles, where they don’t have enough money to test DNA evidence in rape cases,” said Judy Kerr, spokesperson for California Crime Victims for Alternatives to the Death Penalty. “We need to use our scarce resources to solve violent crimes, like murder and rape. We can’t afford to waste another center on a broken death penalty system.”

Kerr’s brother was murdered in 2003 and the case remains unsolved.

According to the bi-partisan California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice, the death penalty costs taxpayers $137 million each year. It noted that the state must also spend $400 million to build a new death row facility. It said the alternative of permanent imprisonment for all those currently on death row would save $125 million each year.

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