An ini­tia­tive on the California bal­lot this November billed by its sup­port­ers as a reform alter­na­tive to abol­ish­ing the state’s death penal­ty will cost the state tens of mil­lions of dol­lars to imple­ment, accord­ing to an analy­sis by the Alarcón Advocacy Center at Loyola Law School, and will not speed up executions.” 

The report, California Votes 2016: An Analysis of the Competing Death Penalty Ballot Initiatives, pre­dicts that Proposition 66 (The Death Penalty Reform and Savings Act of 2016), would cost mil­lions more than the [state’s] already expen­sive death penal­ty sys­tem” and will only make mat­ters worse by cre­at­ing more delays and fur­ther clog­ging the state’s over-bur­dened court sys­tem,” adding lay­ers of appeals to a sys­tem already fac­ing an insur­mount­able back­log of decades of death penal­ty appeals wait­ing to be decided.” 

The report states that pro­vi­sions in Prop 66 to exempt lethal injec­tion pro­to­cols from pub­lic over­sight will cer­tain­ly be sub­ject to lit­i­ga­tion … on con­sti­tu­tion­al and oth­er grounds, should Prop 66 pass, adding yet more delays to death penal­ty cas­es.” It crit­i­cizes Prop 66 as fail[ing] to make the con­sti­tu­tion­al changes required to deliv­er the results it promis­es” and con­cludes that its pro­pos­als are so con­vo­lut­ed that they are like­ly to cre­ate many new prob­lems that will not only com­pli­cate the admin­is­tra­tion of the death penal­ty sys­tem, but will also impact and harm the rest of California’s legal sys­tem.” The report con­trasts Prop 66 with an oppos­ing bal­lot ini­tia­tive, Proposition 62 (The Justice That Works Act of 2016), which would abol­ish the death penal­ty in favor of life with­out parole. 

According to the state Legislative Analyst, Prop 66 will cost tens of mil­lions of dol­lars per year,” while Prop 62 would save California tax­pay­ers $150 mil­lion per year. The authors of the Loyola report, Paula Mitchell, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Alarcón Advocacy Center, and Nancy Haydt, a board mem­ber of California Attorneys for Criminal Justice, sum­ma­rize the issues before the vot­ers as fol­lows: The pro­po­nents of both Prop 62 and Prop 66 agree that California’s death penal­ty sys­tem is dys­func­tion­al, exor­bi­tant­ly expen­sive, and fail­ing to achieve its pur­pose. Prop 62 responds to this failed sys­tem by replac­ing it entire­ly, adapt­ing the exist­ing regime of life impris­on­ment with­out parole to cov­er all per­sons who are con­vict­ed of mur­der with spe­cial cir­cum­stances. Prop 66 responds to this fail­ure with a sweep­ing array of con­vo­lut­ed pro­posed fix­es.’ Our detailed analy­sis reveals that most of these changes will actu­al­ly make the death penal­ty sys­tem worse, and will result in its prob­lems neg­a­tive­ly impact­ing the rest of the legal sys­tem in California.”

Citation Guide
Sources

Paula Mitchell and Nancy Haydt, California Votes 2016: An Analysis of the Competing Death Penalty Ballot Initiatives,” Alarcón Advocacy Center, Loyola Law School, July 20, 2016. See Studies, Costs, and Recent Legislation.