California Weighs Alternatives to “Dysfunctional” Death Penalty Process

Governor Arnold Schwartzneggar told a hastily assembled Sacramento news conference that California must find alternatives to its death penalty process, declared “dysfunctional” by a state commission this week.

“We aren’t killing enough people,” Schwartzneggar admitted. “We can do better.”

The commission said that California could save $100 million a year if it repaired or abandoned its current approach to the death penalty, which takes on average 17 years from sentencing to killing, compared with a national average of 10 years.

“First, we must make better use of the inmates’ skills,” Schwartzneggar told reporters. “Remember that most of them have been convicted of murder. So we could have them killing each other, at a much lower cost. I mean, $100 million a year? Some of these guys killed for as little as fifty bucks.

“Second,” Schwartzneggar said, “we have horrible cost overruns on our new death row at San Quentin--$400 million instead of $220 million. And with the high cost of gas, operating a gas chamber will be even more expensive.

“So we can go back to more traditional, and in my opinion, more humane ways of executing prisoners, such as throwing them from the tops of prisons, and turn the new death row into condos. The gas chamber could be turned into a sauna for the remaining prisoners or something like that.”

The panel also noted that California has an extremely large number of crimes that carry the death penalty. “Maybe there are alternatives that we can explore to the death penalty for some of these crimes,” Schwartzneggar suggested. “Just make them move to Sacramento. In my experience, that’s punishment enough.”