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California and the Death Penalty - New Public Opinion Polling

By Steve Hall

"Californians' support for death penalty waning," is the title of Carol Williams' report in today's Los Angeles Times.A majority of Californians still favor the death penalty, but their support has waned from 79% to 66% over the last two decades as fears of executing the wrongly convicted escalate, a researcher reported Tuesday.The survey conducted by Craig Haney, a UC Santa Cruz psychology professor and lawyer, also showed that most Californians erroneously believe that it costs taxpayers less to execute condemned prisoners than to keep them locked up for life.In California, it costs $138,000 a year to incarcerate each of San Quentin State Prison's 685 death row inmates, nearly three times the non-capital inmate cost, according to the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation...continue to full post

Full post as published by StandDown Texas Project on September 02, 2009 (boomark / email).