I don’t know. Maybe not this year. But we’re getting a lot closer — and in the end, it’s not coming down to morality or cruelty or effectiveness but to money.
State Sen. Loni Hancock of Berkeley had a hearing July 7 on the issue, and has a bill to replace death sentences with sentences of life without parole. Honestly? It’s the same thing right now, for all practical purposes — the number one cause of death on Death Row is old age. The whole process is so (necessarily) lengthy and expensive that it just doesn’t work. And it’s costing the taxpayers a fortune.
Wouldn’t it be odd if, after all these years people like me have spent talking about the inhumanity, unfairness and grisly brutality of the death penalty, it fiscal conservative argument carried the day and we stopped executions to save money? But hell, I’ll take it.