Re "A dysfunctional death penalty" (Editorial series, Sept. 9-12): Incarcerating California's approximately 3700 life-without-parole inmates costs around $185 million a year. When adding the figures for processing these inmates through our justice system, we can conservatively estimate an annual expenditure of $250 million.
But if we reform our dysfunctional death penalty appeal process and switch to the one-drug cocktail, the enormous savings could be funneled to pre-school and public education in poverty stricken areas, which in turn would reduce the number of future sociopaths that are unleashed upon California.
Because the sentence of life-without-parole is a statement that the inmate committed a heinous murder, cannot be rehabilitated and will always be a threat to society, it should be abolished. Instead, victims, their survivors, and society deserve the social and economic justice that would result from an expedient death penalty process. I urge my fellow Californians to vote "no" on proposition 34.
-- Paul Warrick, West Sacramento
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