Is There a Humane Way to Kill?

CALIFORNIA | LOCAL

California chief justice urges reevaluating death penalty

December 24, 2011 | By Maura Dolan, Los Angeles Times

Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye, who heads the state's judicial branch and its highest court, said in an interview that the death penalty is no longer effective in California and suggested she would welcome a public debate on its merits and costs. During an interview in her chambers, as she prepared to close up shop for the holidays, the Republican appointee and former prosecutor made her first public statements about capital punishment a year after she took the helm of the state's judiciary and at a time when petitions are being gathered for an initiative to abolish the death penalty.

In 1978, the first time Jerry Brown was governor of California, he appointed me to a judgeship in the Superior Court of Orange County. It was a gutsy move on his part, a liberal Democrat naming a right-wing Republican to the bench. I served there until 1993, after which I sat on assignment on death cases throughout California.

During that time, I presided over 10 murder cases in which I sentenced the convicted men to die. As a result, I became known as "the hanging judge of Orange County," an appellation that, I will confess, I accepted with some pride.

Had I known then what I know now, I would have given Alcala and the others the alternative sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole. Had I done that, Robin's mother, Marianne, would have been spared the pain of 30 appeals and writs and retrial. She could have dealt then and there with the fact that her daughter's killer would be shut away, never again to see a day of freedom, and gone on to put her life together. And the people of California would have not have had to pay many millions of tax dollars in this meaningless and ultimately fruitless pursuit of death.

I watch today as Gov. Brown wrestles with the massive debt that is suffocating our state and hear him say he doesn't want to "play games." But I cringe when I learn that not playing games amounts to cuts to kindergarten, cuts to universities, cuts to people with special needs — and I hear no mention of the simple cut that would save hundreds of millions of dollars, countless man-hours, unimaginable court time and years of emotional torture for victim's family members waiting for that magical sense of "closure" they've been falsely promised with death sentences that will never be carried out.

There is actually, I've come to realize, no such thing as "closure" when a loved one is taken. What family members must find is reconciliation with the reality of their loss, and that can begin the minute the perpetrator is sent to a prison he will never leave. But to ask them to endure the years of being dragged through the courts in pursuit of the ultimate punishment is a cruel lie.

It's time to stop playing the killing game. Let's use the hundreds of millions of dollars we'll save to protect some of those essential services now threatened with death. Let's stop asking people like me to lie to those victim's family members.

Can you imagine society in general with many of these perps at large and doing whatever they will and want? Would that happen if there was no accountabiliity for their actions? Jess asking.....

Death Penalty is a deterrent to future crimes....at least as far as the recently executed is concerned

What might not be clear unless said, is that these sentiments are EXACTLY the kind of thoughts that murderers have. So, if you want to know how that sort of thinking and behavior is created, that's it.

These would be the same sentiments that you would find if you walked into a prison, and asked convicted criminals. Law of the street. Frontier Justice.

But hey, it's easier to just kill them. Then we don't have to deal with such distasteful questions.

Hanging also works just fine-

Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.

Life in prison is also a reliable deterrent. With the possibility of commutation if it is later proven he was falsely convicted, either through mistake, perjured testimony or prosecutorial misconduct.

you're applying a double standard.

you're applying a double standard.

Absolutely not. If they commit another crime send them back for a longer time.

He was sentenced to 21 years in prison, in a form of preventive detention that required a minimum of 10 years incarceration and the possibility of an extension of that incarceration for as long as he is deemed a danger to society. This is the maximum penalty in Norway; he will likely remain in prison for the remainder of his life

if you can't think of a way, using all the tools at our industrial society's disposal, to reliably, quickly, and relatively painlessly (say relative compared to how most of us will die, which will be exactly pleasant)

Maybe He wasn't looking down then.

Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.