Justin Wolfers, an economist and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, recently underscored the problems identified in a sweeping ruling holding California’s death penalty unconstitutional. “Capital punishment,” Wolfers said, “is not only rare, but it’s also an extraordinarily long and drawn-out process.” For many offenders, “death row may actually be safer than life on the street.” He compared the relatively few executions to the large number of people on death row: “A simple thought experiment makes the point: If a death sentence puts you at the back of the queue of 3,000 prisoners to be executed, and only 50 people are executed each year, then it would take you, on average, 60 years to reach the front of the line. Not surprisingly, many die of natural causes while waiting their turn.” He concluded by quoting the federal judge in the California ruling that a death sentence is effectively a sentence of “life in prison, with the remote possibility of death.”

(J. Wolfers, “Life in Prison, With the Remote Possibility of Death,” New York Times, op-ed, July 18, 2014). See Arbitrariness and New Voices.

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