On June 30th, the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice released a 107-page report on the state’s cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment sys­tem, call­ing it ​“dys­func­tion­al” and a ​“bro­ken sys­tem.” The Commission, chaired by for­mer Attorney General John Van de Kamp, came to the con­clu­sion that California would save hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars if cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment was elim­i­nat­ed. The report states, ​“The fam­i­lies of mur­der vic­tims are cru­el­ly delud­ed into believ­ing that jus­tice will be deliv­ered with final­i­ty dur­ing their life­times.” It adds, ​“The strain placed by these cas­es on our jus­tice sys­tem, in terms of the time and atten­tion tak­en away from oth­er busi­ness that the courts must con­duct for our cit­i­zens, is heavy.” 

One of the options men­tioned by the report was for the state to elim­i­nate the death penal­ty and con­vert the max­i­mum pun­ish­ment to life in prison with­out parole. The Commission cit­ed the hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars a year the state would save and added, ​“most California death sen­tences are actu­al­ly sen­tences of life­time incar­cer­a­tion.” If the state choos­es to keep the death penal­ty, the Commission rec­om­mend­ed that California reduce the num­ber of crimes eli­gi­ble for the death penal­ty from 21 to 5, decreas­ing the death row pop­u­la­tion by almost 50 per­cent.
(Associated Press, ​“Report: California death penal­ty sys­tem deeply flawed,” New York Times, July 1, 2008). See also the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice report at http://​www​.ccfaj​.org/. See Costs and Studies.

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