The for­mer war­den of San Quentin prison in California, Jeanne Woodford, regrets hav­ing tak­en part in exe­cu­tions and has called for replac­ing the death penal­ty with life with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole. In an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times, Woodford notes that after each exe­cu­tion, ​“some­one on the staff would ask, ​‘Is the world safer because of what we did tonight?’ We knew the answer: No.” The full arti­cle can be found below. 

Death row real­ism: Do exe­cu­tions make us safer? San Quentin’s for­mer war­den says no.
By Jeanne Woodford

As the war­den of San Quentin, I presided over four exe­cu­tions. After each one,
some­one on the staff would ask, ​“Is the world safer because of what we did
tonight?”

We knew the answer: No.

I worked in cor­rec­tions for 30 years, start­ing as a cor­rec­tion­al offi­cer and
work­ing my way up to war­den at San Quentin and then on to the top job in the
state — direc­tor of the California Department of Corrections and
Rehabilitation. During those years, I came to believe that the death penal­ty
should be replaced with life with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole.

I did­n’t reach that con­clu­sion because I’m soft on crime. My No. 1 con­cern is
pub­lic safe­ty. I want my chil­dren and grand­chil­dren to have the safe­ty and
free­dom to pur­sue their dreams. I know from first­hand expe­ri­ence that some
peo­ple are dan­ger­ous and must be removed from soci­ety for­ev­er — peo­ple such
as Robert Lee Massie.

I presided over Massie’s exe­cu­tion in 2001. He was first sen­tenced to death
for the 1965 mur­der of a moth­er of two. But when exe­cu­tions were tem­porar­i­ly
banned in 1972, his sen­tence was changed to one that would allow parole, and
he was released in 1978. Months lat­er, he killed a 61-year-old liquor store
own­er and was returned to death row.

For sup­port­ers of the death penal­ty, Massie is a poster child. Yet for me, he
stands out among the exe­cu­tions I presided over as the strongest exam­ple of
how emp­ty and futile the act of exe­cu­tion is.

I remem­ber that night clear­ly. It was March 27, 2001. I was the last per­son to
talk to Massie before he died. After that, I brought the wit­ness­es in. I
looked at the clock to make sure it was after mid­night. I got a sig­nal from
two mem­bers of my staff who were on the phone with the state Supreme Court and
the U.S. attor­ney gen­er­al’s office to make sure there were no last-minute
legal imped­i­ments to the exe­cu­tion. There were none, so I gave the order to
pro­ceed. It took sev­er­al min­utes for the lethal injec­tions to take effect.

I did my job, but I don’t believe it was the right thing to have done. We
should have con­demned Massie to per­ma­nent impris­on­ment — that would have made
the world safer. But on the night we exe­cut­ed him, when the ques­tion was
asked, ​“Did this make the world safer?” the answer remained no. Massie need­ed
to be kept away from soci­ety, but we did not need to kill him.

Why should we pay to keep him locked up for life? I hear that ques­tion
con­stant­ly. Few peo­ple know the answer: It’s cheap­er — much, much cheap­er
than exe­cu­tion.

I wish the pub­lic knew how much the death penal­ty affects their wal­lets.
California spends an addi­tion­al $117 mil­lion each year pur­su­ing the exe­cu­tion
of those on death row. Just hous­ing inmates on death row costs an addi­tion­al
$90,000 per pris­on­er per year above what it would cost to house them with the
gen­er­al prison pop­u­la­tion.

A statewide, bipar­ti­san com­mis­sion recent­ly con­clud­ed that we must spend $100
mil­lion more each year to fix the many prob­lems with cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in
California. Total price tag: in excess of $200 mil­lion-a-year more than sim­ply
con­demn­ing peo­ple to life with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole.

If we con­demn the worst offend­ers, like Massie, to per­ma­nent impris­on­ment,
resources now spent on the death penal­ty could be used to inves­ti­gate unsolved
homi­cides, mod­ern­ize crime labs and expand effec­tive vio­lence pre­ven­tion
pro­grams, espe­cial­ly in at-risk com­mu­ni­ties. The mon­ey also could be used to
inter­vene in the lives of chil­dren at risk and to invest in their edu­ca­tion –
to stop future vic­tim­iza­tion.

As I presided over Massie’s exe­cu­tion, I thought about the abuse and neglect
he endured as a child in the fos­ter care sys­tem. We failed to keep him safe,
and our fail­ure con­tributed to who he was as an adult. Instead of spend­ing
hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars to kill him, what if we spent that mon­ey on
oth­er fos­ter chil­dren so that we stop pro­duc­ing men like Massie in the first
place?

As direc­tor of cor­rec­tions, I vis­it­ed Watts and met with some ex-offend­ers. I
learned that the prison sys­tem is parol­ing 300 peo­ple every week into the
neigh­bor­hood with­out a plan or resources for suc­cess. How can we con­tin­ue to
spend more than $100 mil­lion a year seek­ing the exe­cu­tion of a hand­ful of
offend­ers while we fail to meet the basic safe­ty needs of com­mu­ni­ties like Watts?

It is not real­is­tic to think that Watts and neigh­bor­hoods like it will ever
get well if we can’t — or won’t — sup­port them in address­ing the prob­lems
they face.

To say that I have regrets about my involve­ment in the death penal­ty is to let
myself off the hook too eas­i­ly. To take a life in order to prove how much we
val­ue anoth­er life does not strength­en our soci­ety. It is a pub­lic pol­i­cy that
deval­ues our very being and detracts cru­cial resources from pro­grams that
could tru­ly make our com­mu­ni­ties safe.
 — - — - -
Jeanne Woodford is the for­mer direc­tor of the California Department of
Corrections and Rehabilitation and the for­mer war­den of San Quentin State Prison.

(J. Woodford, ​“Death Row Realism, Do Executions Make Us Safer?”, LA Times, October 2, 2008). See New Voices, Costs, and Deterrence.

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