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A growing movement is demanding the United States do away with the death penalty. In 2012 voters had the chance to vote to replace California’s death penalty with life without the possibility of parole. But while some saw the ballot measure as a way to end the death penalty, others saw Life Without Parole as another kind of death sentence.
On this edition reporter Nancy Mullane speaks to some of those on California’s death row and we hear from two opponents of the death penalty about where the movement to end executions goes next.
Featuring:
Sam Robinson, Public Information Officer Lieutenant; Walter Cook, San Quentin State Prison Inmate; Demitrius Howard, San Quentin State Prison Inmate; Justin Helzer, San Quentin State Prison Inmate; Christine Thomas, Campaign to End the Death Penalty; David Dow, University of Houston Law Center professor
California Voter Guide
National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty
Death Penalty Focus
Death Penalty Information Center
Campaign to End The Death Penalty
Selective Empathy
Defeat of Proposition 34: California’s Death Penalty Battle Continues
Prop 34 fails but signals the imminent demise of California’s death penalty
At San Quentin 647 condemned killers wait to die in the most populous execution antechamber in the United States.
Life without Parole, a Different Kind of Death Penalty
Nancy Mullane Walks Death Row at San Quentin State Prison
Tags: civil liberties and rights, democracy and elections, poverty, prisons, privatization, race, speech/analysis
David Dow exposes the hopelessness of the child, Will, condemned by a system that did not devote enough appropriate time and care to protecting him so that inevitably,as so often is the case, he went on through progressive stages of antisocial behaviour, to murder and was subsequently executed.But that execution is a punishment, a revenge killing in itself. Will did not leave prison to commit more crimes it is true but it is also true that thousands of other people who have lived similar lives to Will, are on death row and still the murders continue, along with the sad and revolting executions. From our country, New Zealand, we find it utterly incredible that such barbaric punishment is acceptable to so many in this day and age in the Land of the Free.