STUDIES: Death Sentences in California Show Arbitrariness of the System

A new report released by the ACLU of Northern California reveals that only three coun­ties – Los Angeles, Orange, and Riverside – account­ed for 83% of the state’s death sen­tences in 2009. Los Angeles County, with 13 death sen­tences, was the lead­ing death penal­ty coun­ty in the entire coun­try last year. According to the report, California, with the largest death row in the coun­try, spends $137 mil­lion annu­al­ly on the death penal­ty, while the state is cut­ting back on many vital ser­vices. The report also indi­cat­ed an increase in the Latino pop­u­la­tion of California’s death row in recent years; 50% of the death sen­tences in 2007 were for Latinos even though they com­prised only 36% of the state’s population.

The exec­u­tive sum­ma­ry of the report con­clud­ed, ​“A shift to per­ma­nent impris­on­ment would mean sig­nif­i­cant sav­ings in a time of fis­cal cri­sis, would elim­i­nate the risk of exe­cut­ing the inno­cent, and would lead to more con­sis­tent poli­cies across all California coun­ties. California is on track to spend $1 bil­lion on the death penal­ty in the next five years, though even more funds are required to pro­tect the inno­cent from wrong­ful con­vic­tion and to ensure time­ly review of lengthy death penal­ty cas­es. For all the mon­ey ded­i­cat­ed to the death penal­ty in California, only 1 out of 100 peo­ple sen­tenced to death has actu­al­ly been exe­cut­ed dur­ing the last thir­ty years.” Click here for the full report.

(N. Minsker et al., ​“Death in Decline ​’09,” ACLU of Northern California, March 29, 2010). See also Arbitrariness and Costs. Click here for more Studies. Click on thumb­nail image below to enlarge a page from the report.