It’s Much Cheaper to Keep Them Than Kill Them

by Jack Lee

According to the very latest data, the cost of incarcerating a prisoner on death row in California runs about $90,000 per year. We have 670 prisoners on death row now and that equals $63.3 million dollars spent annually and one report suggests that estimate is way too low and does not account for all the costs.

Of the over 3500 men (and a few women) that have received the death sentence in California since 1978, only 17 have been executed. This amounts to almost $33 million dollars spent on legal costs and endless court appeals for each person who was actually executed.

The ACLU of Northern California’s Report “The Hidden Death Tax” (2008) report reveals that:

• California taxpayers pay at least $117 million each year post-trial seeking execution of the people currently on death row;
• Executing all of the people currently on death row, or waiting for them to die there of other causes, will cost California an estimated $4 billion more than if they had been sentenced to die in prison of disease, injury, or old age;
• California death penalty trials have cost as much as $10.9 million.

If the will of the people is guaranteed to be flaunted by liberal lawyers who are dedicated to abolishing the death penalty, and we can’t seem to find the means to defeat them, then maybe we should look at abolishing the death penalty altogether. If we did, California could save $1 billion every five years by replacing the death penalty with permanent life imprisonment.

I’m a strong advocate of the death penalty and if I were King there would zero inmates on death row by next week, but I’m not King and there is no way we’re going to win against the current judicial system that is firmly against the death penalty… short of forcibly replacing every liberal judge in California and totally changing the appeal system through legislation. Realistically we’re never going to do that, California is just too full of sob-sisters and liberal idiots. So, it looks like the only viable alternative now is to give in to the lefties and salvage what we can…i.e., the billions currently spent on keeping the killers death row and put them in general lock up for life. There will be a price to pay for that too, more inmate killings and guards that will be hurt or killed, but there it is…because our death penalty is NOT working and it will NEVER work in this screwed up state.