Arguments 66

This page shows the official arguments written by the Prop 66 campaign and included in the California Voter Guide, along with analysis and additional information provided by the Death Penalty Information Center. Arguments that are verified by DPIC research are highlighted in green, while arguments that are known to be false or misleading are highlighted in red. Arguments that may be incomplete, unverified, or otherwise potentially misleading are highlighted in yellow. Click the footnote number following each highlight to see DPIC’s explanation. 

California’s elected law enforcement leaders, police officers, frontline prosecutors, and the families of murder victims1-128 ask you to REFORM the California death penalty system by voting YES ON PROPOSITION 66!

We agree California’s current death penalty system is broken.2-128 The most heinous criminals3-128 sit on death row for 30 years, with endless appeals delaying justice and costing taxpayers hundreds of millions.

It does not need to be this way.

The solution is to MEND, NOT END, California’s death penalty.

The solution is YES on PROPOSITION 66.

Proposition 66 was written to speed up the death penalty appeals system while ensuring that no innocent person is ever executed.4-128

Proposition 66 means the worst of the worst killers receive the strongest sentence.5-128

Prop. 66 brings closure to the families of victims.6-128

Proposition 66 protects public safety—these brutal killers have no chance of ever being in society again.7-128

Prop. 66 saves taxpayers money, because heinous criminals will no longer be sitting on death row at taxpayer expense for 30+ years.8-128

Proposition 66 was written by frontline death penalty prosecutors who know the system inside and out. They know how the system is broken, and they know how to fix it. It may sound complicated, but the reforms are actually quite simple.

HERE’S WHAT PROPOSITION 66 DOES:

  1. All state appeals should be limited to 5 years.9-128
  2. Every murderer sentenced to death will have their special appeals lawyer assigned immediately. Currently, it can be five years or more before they are even assigned a lawyer.10-128
  3. The pool of available lawyers to handle these appeals will be expanded.11-128
  4. The trial courts who handled the death penalty trials and know them best will deal with the initial appeals.12-128
  5. The State Supreme Court will be empowered to oversee the system and ensure appeals are expedited while protecting the rights of the accused.
  6. The State Corrections Department (Prisons) will reform death row housing; taking away special privileges from these brutal killers and saving millions.13-128

Together, these reforms will save California taxpayers over $30,000,000 annually, according to former California Finance Director Mike Genest, while making our death penalty system work again.14-128

WE NEED A FUNCTIONING DEATH PENALTY SYSTEM IN CALIFORNIA

Death sentences are issued rarely and judiciously, and only against the very worst murderers.15-128

To be eligible for the death penalty in California, you have to be guilty of first-degree murder with “special circumstances.”

These special circumstances include, in part:

  • Murderers who raped/tortured their victims.
  • Child killers.
  • Multiple murderers/serial killers.
  • Murders committed by terrorists; as part of a hate-crime; or killing a police officer.

There are nearly 2,000 murders in California annually. Only about 15 death penalty sentences are imposed.16-128

But when these horrible crimes occur, and a jury unanimously finds a criminal guilty and separately, unanimously recommends death, the appeals should be heard within five years, and the killer executed.

Help us protect California,17-128 provide closure to victims,18-128 and save taxpayers millions.19-128

Visit www.NoProp62YesProp66.com for more information.

Then join law enforcement and families of victims and vote YES ON PROPOSITION 66!

JACKIE LACEY, District Attorney of Los Angeles County

KERMIT ALEXANDER, Family Member of Multiple Homicide Victims

SHAWN WELCH, President

Contra Costa County Deputy Sheriffs Association

Notes:

  1. Families of murder victims are a diverse group of individuals who remain divided on the issue of the death penalty. Many families of murder victims support Prop 66 and many others support the alternative Prop 62. Voters should not infer that all murder victims’ family members agree. See: Victims and the Death Penalty↩

  2. All legal experts have agreed that California’s current death penalty system does not function as designed. See: California Cost Study. In 2014, a federal district court declared “the dysfunctional administration of California’s death penalty system” to be unconstitutional. That ruling was later overturned on procedural grounds without addressing the district court’s underlying findings of fact.↩

  3. Studies suggest that defendants who are sentenced to death have not necessarily committed the “most heinous” crimes and that those who commit “the most heinous crimes” do not necessarily receive the death penalty. For instance, a study of the 205 death-eligible homicides prosecuted in Connecticut rated the “egregiousness” of the murderers’ conduct and compared the conduct of those who were sentenced to death with those who were found guilty but ultimately not sentenced to death. Only 1 of the 9 defendants who were sentenced to death fell within the 15% of cases considered most “egregious,” and the others ranked between 33rd and 170th on the scale of egregiousness. Donohue, An Empirical Evaluation of the Connecticut Death Penalty System Since 1973: Are There Unlawful Racial, Gender, and Geographic Disparities?↩

  4. Prop 66 actually weakens protections for innocent people. According to Barry Scheck, co-founder of the national Innocence Project, “its poorly written provisions will increase the risk of executing the innocent.”↩

  5. Prop 66 has no effect on which defendants are charged with capital murder and which are ultimately sentenced to death. Nor does it include any provisions to ensure that that death sentences will be carried out only against “the worst of the worst killers.”↩

  6. “Closure” for victims is a complicated emotional and psychological process that varies greatly from person to person. Voters should not infer that all families of victims experience “closure” in the same way. A University of Minnesota study reported that just 2.5% of victims’ family members and close friends said they achieved closure as a result of capital punishment, while 20.1% said the execution did not help them heal. And a study published in the Marquette Law Journal reported that victims’ family members experienced improved physical and psychological health and greater satisfaction with the legal system in cases in which defendants received life sentences, rather than death sentences. See STUDIES: Death Penalty Adversely Affects Families of Victims and Defendants;  Closure? The Execution Was Just the Start; and VICTIMS: Murder Victim’s Daughter Says “Broken” Death Penalty Doesn’t Bring Closure and is “A Waste.”↩

  7. There is no evidence that Prop 66 will protect public safety or afford current death-row prisoners any less of a “chance of ever being in society again” than would Prop 62’s proposed remedy of resentencing those currently on death row to life without possibility of parole. On the related question of whether the death penalty is a deterrent at all, the National Research Council of the National Academies of Science reviewed more than three decades of studies on the subject and determined that the research “is not informative about whether capital punishment decreases, increases, or has no effect on homicide rates.” It recommended that the research should “not be used to inform deliberations requiring judgments about the effect of the death penalty on homicide.” The NRC’s 2012 report concluded that studies claiming that the death penalty had any deterrent effect on murder were fundamentally flawed. DETERRENCE: National Research Council Concludes Deterrence Studies Should Not Influence Death Penalty Policy. A 2015 study by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University examined the potential causes of the dramatic drop in crime in the U.S. in the 1990s and 2000s and concluded that the death penalty had no effect on the decline. STUDIES: Death Penalty Had No Effect on Reducing Crime. See also Facts About Deterrence and the Death Penalty.↩

  8. The financial impact of Prop 66 is uncertain and includes both potential savings and increased costs. See Fiscal Impact. By comparison, the savings anticipated by Prop 66 proponents amount to 20% of the savings to taxpayers that would be realized if Prop 62 were adopted.↩

  9. Currently state appeals to death sentences last an average of 15-25 years. The method of enforcing the proposed 5-year limit under Prop 66 is unclear. Further, evidence of innocence and of police or prosecutorial misconduct is often not discovered for many years, and sometimes not for decades. As a result, the artificial 5-year time limit imposed by Prop 66 has been criticized as increasing the risk that innocent death row prisoners, and particularly those who were convicted or sentenced to death as a result of police or prosecutorial misconduct will be wrongfully executed.↩

  10. One cause of delay in the current system is the number of qualified appeals lawyers available. Prop 66 proposes to train more appeals lawyers and require them to accept death row cases. The implementation and funding for this initiative remains unclear.↩

  11. One cause of delay in the current system is the number of qualified appeals lawyers available. Prop 66 proposes to train more appeals lawyers and require them to accept death row cases. The implementation and funding for this initiative remains unclear.↩

  12. Another cause of delay in the current system is the backlog of appeals at the State Supreme Court. This measure would re-assign those cases to trial courts. Supporters of Prop 66 claim that shifting these appeals from the Supreme Court to the Trial Court will increase the speed of resolution, but do not explain how.↩

  13. Currently death row inmates are housed in a special unit in San Quentin. Although they are subject to extreme restrictions based on their status as death row prisoners, they also receive certain special privileges. Prop 66 allows prisoners to be re-assigned to other California prisons, where they will be treated similarly to other inmates. Resentencing these prisoners to life without parole, as would occur under Prop 62, would have the same effect.↩

  14. The financial impact of Prop 66 is uncertain and includes both potential savings and increased costs. If it produced the $30 million in cost savings its proponents expect, that would be a cost savings that is an estimated $120 million less per year than Prop 62 is expected to achieve. See Fiscal Impact.↩

  15. The rarity or prevalence of death sentences in California depends more upon the county in which the prosecution takes place than the severity of the crime for which a death sentence is issued. A study of California’s use of the death penalty throughout the decade of the 1990s showed that numerous legally inappropriate factors contributed to death sentencing across the state. For instance, it found that those charged with killing White, non-Hispanic victims were more likely to be sentenced to death than other homicide defendants, irrespective of the comparative egregiousness of the murders. It also found significant geographic disparities in death sentencing practices, with counties that have a lower population density and a higher proportion of non-Hispanic Whites in their populations to have the highest rates of death sentences. See: Legally Inappropriate Factors. Over the period 2010-2015, five California counties each imposed more death sentences than 99.5% of the counties in the rest of the United States: Los Angeles, Orange, San Bernardino, Riverside, and Kern. See: Too Broken. In 2015, Riverside County by itself accounted for 16% of all the new death sentences imposed in the United States. See DPIC 2015 Year End Report.↩

  16. Since 2001 the annual number of death sentences issued in California has ranged from a high of 30 to a low of 9. In 2015 California had the highest number of new death sentences in the nation with 14. See: Sentencing↩

  17. There is no evidence that the death penalty promotes public safety or protects citizens any better than the sentencing alternative of life without possibility of parole.↩

  18. A University of Minnesota study reported that just 2.5% of victims’ family members and close friends said they achieved closure as a result of capital punishment, while 20.1% said the execution did not help them heal. See STUDIES: Death Penalty Adversely Affects Families of Victims and Defendants↩

  19. The financial impact of Prop 66 is uncertain and includes both potential savings and increased costs. The most favorable estimates suggest that it would save taxpayers an estimated $120 million less per year than would Prop 62. See Fiscal Impact.↩

highlighted in green,

highlighted in red.

highlighted in yellow.

the families of murder victims

We agree California’s current death penalty system is broken.

The most heinous criminals

Proposition 66 was written to speed up the death penalty appeals system while ensuring that no innocent person is ever executed.

Proposition 66 means the worst of the worst killers receive the strongest sentence.

Prop. 66 brings closure to the families of victims.

Proposition 66 protects public safety—these brutal killers have no chance of ever being in society again.

Prop. 66 saves taxpayers money, because heinous criminals will no longer be sitting on death row at taxpayer expense for 30+ years.

All state appeals should be limited to 5 years.

Every murderer sentenced to death will have their special appeals lawyer assigned immediately. Currently, it can be five years or more before they are even assigned a lawyer.

The pool of available lawyers to handle these appeals will be expanded.

The trial courts who handled the death penalty trials and know them best will deal with the initial appeals.

The State Corrections Department (Prisons) will reform death row housing; taking away special privileges from these brutal killers and saving millions.

Together, these reforms will save California taxpayers over $30,000,000 annually, according to former California Finance Director Mike Genest, while making our death penalty system work again.

Death sentences are issued rarely and judiciously, and only against the very worst murderers.

There are nearly 2,000 murders in California annually. Only about 15 death penalty sentences are imposed.

protect California,

provide closure to victims,

save taxpayers millions.

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