老澳门开奖结果

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It's never too late.

After30 years of executions, the state of California is finally conductingan exhaustive review of the death penalty system. While the reportwill not be released to the public for another few weeks, thetroubling evidence they reviewed is already known.

Highlightsinclude: extraordinarily high costs, an unacceptable backlog ofcapital cases, as well as racial, ethnic, and geographic disparitiesin sentencing鈥攑roblems with the administration of the deathpenaltyin California are in no short supply. The upcoming report by thewill focus on whether it' possible to fix these problems,and ifso, how much we will have to pay to implement the needed remedies.Bottom line, Californians will need to decide, is it worth the price?

Inpreparation forthis report, due out June 30, the commission conducted hearingsacross the state, hearing from more than 70 witnesses and reviewing thousands of pages ofwritten submissions, all highlighting a myriad of problems withCalifornia' death penalty.

Experttestimonyhas raised the following concerns, among others:

• Thedeath penalty process costs California an estimated .
• Californiahas the largest death row in the country with 670 people currentlysentenced to death.
• Increasingdemands on the California judiciary mean less time to devote to thedeath penalty appeals process, which in turn leads to in the administration of justice.
• Despiteefforts on the part of the California Supreme Court, the extremedemands of death penalty-related cases .
• Legallyinappropriate factors, including race and geography, on who is sentenced to death.
• Californiahas had between in recent years.
• Familymembers of murder victims are dragged through years and years ofappeals, sometimes even after they tell the district attorney that .

Theseand otherproblems led Chief Justice of the California' Supreme Courttotell the commission that California' death penalty isdysfunctional and, if nothing is done, will 鈥渃ollapse of itsownweight.鈥� The task for the commission is to decide, what canbe doneand at what cost?

Welook forward tothe commission' findings and encourage you to keep an eyeout forthis important assessment of the state of justice in California.

Forfurtherbackground on the death penalty in California see , ,and the .