Supporters of capital punishment are well aware that after the death penalty gets abolished, life without parole will be abolished next. Here are some examples:
Check out two of my previous posts:
Please watch 0:50 of the video in this post: http://wwwiloveccp-thepunisher2008.blogspot.com/2011/03/council-of-europe-debates-death-penalty.html
Here are two more news:
Report wants life without parole abolished |
Updated 7/22/2009 11:19 PM |
By Kevin Johnson, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON — A record 140,610 inmates in state and federal prisons are serving life sentences and nearly one-third of those have no possibility of parole, according to a criminal justice research group that supports alternatives to incarceration.
The Sentencing Project, whose reports are regularly cited in academic and government reviews examining criminal justice policy, concluded that the number of inmates sentenced to life without parole has more than tripled to 41,095 since 1992. The report, citing in part the rising cost of incarceration, urges that life without parole be abolished.
The recommendation was met with strong opposition from some law enforcement officials who said life sentences, including life without parole, help drive down violent crime.
Joseph Cassilly, past president of the National District Attorneys Association, acknowledged that long prison terms are a "huge drain on resources."
He said life sentences are appropriate for violent offenders and even some repeat drug dealers.
"Sometimes there is no way of getting through to these (criminals,)" said Cassilly, who did not dispute the report's statistical findings.
In the project's review, titled "No Exit," researchers also found "overwhelming" racial and ethnic disparities for those serving life terms: 66% are non-white and 77% of juveniles sentenced to life in prison are non-white.
"Life sentences imposed on juveniles represent a fundamental and unwise shift from the long-standing tradition that juveniles are less culpable than adults ... and are capable of change," said Ashley Nellis, a co-author of the report.
Among other findings:
• In Alabama, California, Massachusetts, Nevada, and New York at least one in 6 prisoners is serving a life sentence.
• California, Florida, Louisiana, Michigan, and Pennsylvania each have more than 3,000 people serving life without parole.
• Pennsylvania leads the nation with 345 juveniles serving life without parole.
• The costs of housing an aging prison population also are rising. States should expect to pay $1 million for each prisoner who spends at least 40 years incarcerated, the report concluded.
Todd Clear, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said the cost of maintaining a permanent prison population is daunting. The total price tag to keep today's "lifers" incarcerated for the rest of their lives could cost the nation tens of billions of dollars, he said.
Brown departs from predecessors on parole for convicted killers
Published Friday, Apr. 29, 2011
Gov. Jerry Brown is letting convicted killers leave prison on parole at a far higher rate than previous governors, only rarely using his power to block decisions of the parole board.
Early in his term, Brown has let 106 of 130 convicted killers' parole releases stand – about 82 percent, according to Brown's office and records provided in response to a California Public Records Act request.
Brown's deference to the state Board of Parole Hearings is in contrast to his predecessors, who more aggressively used their power to overturn parole grants.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger let stand only about 27 percent of parole decisions. Gov. Gray Davis was even less lenient, letting only nine of 374 paroled killers out of prison while he was governor.
"If you take someone else's life, forget it," Davis said shortly after he took office in 1999. "I see no reason to parole people who have committed an act of murder."
A spokeswoman said Thursday that Brown is basing his parole decisions on public safety concerns and a 2008 state Supreme Court ruling that a governor may not deny parole based solely on the gravity of a prisoner's crime, but requires some evidence that he or she remains dangerous.
"Hundreds of cases were coming back where governors and the parole board were being sued," spokeswoman Elizabeth Ashford said. "The two guiding principles are that law as well as public safety."
Now 73 years old and in his third term, Brown, a Democrat and former attorney general, also may be less encumbered by political ambition.
"When someone's running for election, a favorite question from the press is, 'Didn't you let X number of murderers out of jail?' " said law professor Heidi Rummel of the University of Southern California's Post-Conviction Justice Project. "It's a hard question to answer without a little bit of context."
The political danger of prisoner releases was perhaps no better demonstrated than in 1988, when Michael Dukakis, the former Massachusetts governor, found his presidential campaign ravaged by ads featuring released killer Willie Horton.
That was the year Californians granted governors the power to reverse parole grants for murderers.
The relatively large number of cases in which Brown has not intervened alarms victim rights advocates, who were critical even of Schwarzenegger's release rate.
Christine Ward, director of the Crime Victims Action Alliance, said Brown's numbers are "absolutely worse" than Schwarzenegger's, but she said she has not yet reviewed the cases he has considered.
"The large number does cause us concern, and we will be investigating," Ward said.
Schwarzenegger, a Republican, suggested early in his first term that he would defer often to the parole board, allowing release of more convicted killers than Davis, a Democrat. But his reversals resulted in numerous lawsuits, with some prisoners freed on court-issued writs of habeas corpus.
Brown's office referred a request for the identities of prisoners he has let out to the parole board, which did not immediately make them available Thursday.
Michael Satris, a Bolinas lawyer who helps life-term prisoners fight for release, said Brown's record represents a "complete reversal." He said Brown has let out a handful of his clients, including Reginald Scott, a Los Angeles County man who, according to court documents, had a previous parole decision reversed by Davis.
Scott, 80, was found guilty of second-degree murder in the beating death of a woman in 1980, according to a court document filed on his behalf.
"He's just getting older and older," Satris said. "Somebody like him is not going to go out and commit another offense at that age."
Of the inmates whose releases Brown blocked, at least two had been granted parole only after federal courts intervened. Brown reversed those cases after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling this year that federal judges have no authority in such state matters.
In one high-profile case, Brown acknowledged in a letter denying Paul Guardado's parole that the Orange County man had "taken some positive steps while incarcerated."
But Brown said Guardado, who participated in the killing of a passerby in a park in 1979, exhibited an "exceptionally callous disregard for the suffering of others," concluding he "is still prone to committing further acts of violence."
Kent Washburn, Guardado's lawyer, said Brown may represent an improvement over previous governors for life-term inmates eligible for parole. But he said, "That's like saying that you're going to have a better human rights record than (Libyan leader Moammar) Gadhafi. We're not setting a high bar here."
Washburn said Guardado has been a model prisoner and deserves to be released.
The state parole board has historically granted parole to relatively few convicted killers, and law professor Rummel said "it makes sense that, at the end of that process, a governor would pay deference to the board."
Ashford said Brown takes into account that parole board members have "boots-on-the-ground experience." However, she said, "The governor reviews each one of these. He reads them. He looks at the full case."
© Copyright The Sacramento Bee. All rights reserved.
http://www.sacbee.com/2011/04/29/3588083/brown-departs-from-predecessors.html
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California ordered to free 46,000 inmates
11:38 AEST Tue May 24 2011
By Lucile Malandain
The US Supreme Court has ordered California to free thousands of prisoners, saying chronic overcrowding violated inmates' rights.
But one dissenting judge called the ruling "outrageous" and California said it was disappointed, even as tensions in its jails were underlined by a second prison riot in days.
In a 5-4 majority ruling upholding a lower court's decision, the Supreme Court said the release is the only way to address the constitutional violation of cruel and unusual punishment.
"This case arises from serious constitutional violations in California's prison system. The violations have persisted for years. They remain uncorrected," Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote.
Cash-strapped California has had a problem with prison overcrowding for years: the US state has about 148,000 inmates housed in 33 jails designed for 80,000 prisoners, according to its own figures.
Kennedy said although the state has reduced the population by at least 9000 during the appeal process, the decision "means a further reduction of 37,000 persons could be required".
"The state may employ measures, including good-time credits and diversion of low-risk offenders and technical parole violators to community-based programs, that will mitigate the order's impact," he said. "The population reduction potentially required is nevertheless of unprecedented sweep and extent."
The order "leaves the choice of means to reduce overcrowding to the discretion of state officials", the ruling read.
"But absent compliance through new construction, out-of-state transfers or other means ... the state will be required to release some number of prisoners before their full sentences have been served."
But in a dissenting view, Justice Antonin Scalia said the ruling could mean the release of 46,000 criminals.
"One would think that, before allowing the decree of a federal district court to release 46,000 convicted felons, this court would bend every effort to read the law in such a way as to avoid that outrageous result," he added.
He warned that "terrible things (were) sure to happen as a consequence of this outrageous order".
California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation secretary Matthew Cate said the state needs more time to ease its overcrowding problem, calling for the "establishment of more appropriate timeframes, if necessary".
"It is disappointing that the court did not consider the numerous improvements made in health-care delivery to inmates in the past five years, as well as the significant reduction in the inmate population," he said.
In August 2009, three federal judges ordered 40,000 prisoners freed within two years. Late last year, California appealed to the Supreme Court to annul the ruling, warning that the freed prisoners could endanger public safety.
The ruling came after at least two inmates were stabbed on Friday when about 150 prisoners rioted at a maximum security prison in the state capital Sacramento. Guards used pepper spray and fired a live round of ammunition to regain control.
On Sunday evening, a riot broke out in the dining hall at San Quentin prison, leaving inmates injured with slash and stab wounds, according to prison spokesman Sam Robinson.
Scalia wrote that the vast majority of inmates who may be affected "do not form part of any aggrieved class even under the court's expansive notion of constitutional violation".
He added: "Most of them will not be prisoners with medical conditions or severe mental illness; and many will undoubtedly be fine physical specimens who have developed intimidating muscles pumping iron in the prison gym."
