“I AM living a parent’s worst nightmare,” says a tearful Sandra Friends in a campaign video for Proposition 66, one of two initiatives related to the death penalty that will appear on California’s ballot on November 8th. Ms Friends’ son Michael Lyons was kidnapped, sexually assaulted and murdered two decades ago in Yuba City, California when he was just eight years old. She has since become a vocal critic of Proposition 62, which would repeal the death penalty, and a champion of Proposition 66, which seeks to “mend, not end” capital punishment.
Though they diverge on how to fix it, the backers of both propositions agree that the current system no longer works. According to Mike Ramos, the district attorney of San Bernardino County, who wants to reform but not abolish the death penalty, it often takes years for lawyers to be assigned to accused murderers. Such delays, combined with legal challenges, mean California has executed only 13 people since 1978, the last in 2006. A decade later, 741 death row inmates await execution in the Golden State—by far the highest number in the country. Last year California ran out of cells for its death-row...Continue reading
Source: United States http://ift.tt/2dXffIg
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