Capital Punishment

An old slogan from the Chinese Communist lexicon is popping back into conversations these days: "Kill a chicken to frighten the monkey." The sacrificial fowl, as it were, turns out to be three men who were executed in Shanghai on Wednesday for their allegedly violent roles in a protest movement that was overwhelmingly nonviolent. The "monkey" consists of the more than 1,600 others detained so far in a massive sweep of protesters, the thousands more who face possible persecution for "thought crimes" and, by extension, the entire Chinese populace.

Hours after accused serial killer Itzcoatl Ocampo allegedly stabbed a homeless man to death in an Anaheim parking lot, he was interviewed by a veteran detective. When Ocampo was asked what sort of consequences he deserved, the 23-year-old answered without hesitation: the death penalty - lethal injection - or "whatever is quickest," the detective, Daron Wyatt, later told a grand jury panel. On Monday, Orange County Dist. Atty. Tony Rackauckas said his office had come to the same conclusion and announced that he would seek the death penalty against the former Marine.

Taxpayers have spent more than $4 billion on capital punishment in California since it was reinstated in 1978, or about $308 million for each of the 13 executions carried out since then, according to a comprehensive analysis of the death penalty's costs. The examination of state, federal and local expenditures for capital cases, conducted over three years by a senior federal judge and a law professor, estimated that the additional costs of capital trials, enhanced security on death row and legal representation for the condemned adds $184 million to the budget each year.

DALLAS - On the way to witness his first execution in the town known as the "Execution Capital of the World," the Dallas County district attorney stopped at the prison cemetery to find his great-grandfather's grave. Captain Joe Byrd Cemetery in Huntsville is the final resting place of inmates whose families could not afford burial anywhere else. Tall pines guard the grassy expanse nicknamed "Peckerwood Hill," where many gravestones bear prison identification numbers, not names.

California is set for a major debate on the death penalty following qualification Monday of a November ballot measure that would replace capital punishment with a life term without possibility of parole. If passed, the measure would make California the 18th state in the nation without a death penalty. During the last five years, four states have replaced the death penalty and Connecticut is soon to follow. Growing numbers of conservatives in California have joined the effort to repeal the state's capital punishment law, expressing frustration with its price tag and the rarity of executions.

This page has a long history of opposing the death penalty. As far back as 1971, before the alternative sentence of life without the possibility of parole had been devised, we were pining for such a choice. If there were a way to ensure that convicted killers would remain in prison for life, a member of The Times' editorial board wrote during the Nixon administration, "would it not be better to forgo, in some humility about the limitations of human judgment, the imposition of the ultimate punishment?

In the South Los Angeles streets where Stanley Tookie Williams once roamed, a few still speak admiringly of how the young co-founder of the Crips used to stroll down the avenues with one strap of his overalls undone to expose his bare 22-inch arms and 55-inch chest, just daring someone to take a shot at him.

As the sun rose Friday behind the Northern Ridge near here and the 6 a.m. bell pealed at nearby St. Mary's College, the trapdoor snapped open beneath Dole Chadee's feet in the State Prison gallows room. Trinidad's most notorious murderer, drug lord and gang leader had been hanged. Joey Ramiah was the next to die. And then, at 8:44 a.m., it was Ramkalawan Singh's turn.

'Remanded" -- taken into custody. In his career as a New York prosecutor and a federal prosecutor in California, Donald Heller has asked the court to remand guilty defendants countless times. He helped put away Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme, who tried to assassinate President Gerald Ford, and a big-time heroin dealer, a man Heller believed destroyed many lives. At the dealer's sentencing hearing, the prosecutor remarked that were the death penalty an option, he would volunteer to "throw the switch.

On the September night that the state of Georgia put Troy Davis to death, a crowd of several hundred gathered at the Supreme Court in Washington to protest America's continued practice of capital punishment. But they were in the wrong place. The protesters should have assembled 600 miles southeast, in Atlanta. The Constitution does not empower the Supreme Court to proscribe capital punishment or to regulate it out of existence, and those who ignore that point have made it increasingly expensive and less effective.

U.S. NAVAL BASE, GUANTANAMO BAY, CUBA -- Cliff Russell lost his brother, a fireman who rushed to the first tower that was hit. Tara Henwood Butzbaugh lost her brother too, a bond trader on the 105thfloor of the same tower. For more than 10 years they have waited for this. “I wish the worst possible death for them,” Russell said, speaking on the eve of the opening in the military commission trial for the five top ringleaders in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.  Butzbaugh could not agree more.

Gov. Jerry Brown has ordered prison officials to consider a single-drug method of executing condemned inmates as the state appeals a court order that has blocked California from carrying out the death penalty. Mention of the directive came in a notice of appeal filed Thursday by Atty. Gen. Kamala D. Harris seeking to counter a February ruling that halted a revised three-drug lethal injection method. The filing came just three days after certification of a November ballot measure that would offer voters the chance to repeal California's death penalty.

California is set for a major debate on the death penalty following qualification Monday of a November ballot measure that would replace capital punishment with a life term without possibility of parole. If passed, the measure would make California the 18th state in the nation without a death penalty. During the last five years, four states have replaced the death penalty and Connecticut is soon to follow. Growing numbers of conservatives in California have joined the effort to repeal the state's capital punishment law, expressing frustration with its price tag and the rarity of executions.

Does facing the death penalty make would-be killers rethink their actions? The question has long been at the center of arguments for and against the death penalty, but a committee formed by the National Research Council released a report Wednesday saying that previous studies, despite their claims, have not been able to fully answer the question and therefore should not be used in debates over capital punishment. The United States Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976.

The fight against the death penalty is gaining momentum, opponents of the practice say, with Connecticut's decision this month to abolish capital punishment making it the fifth state in five years to so do. "For this to be happening in succession, and coupled with the decline in death penalty convictions, it creates a momentum that other states will at least consider to be a part of," said Richard Dieter, executive director of the independent Death...

Connecticut has become the 17th state to repeal the death penalty, with lawmakers voting 86-62 on the measure after a marathon debate that stretched into the night and revived memories of some of the state's most heinous crimes. Gov. Dannel Malloy has said he will sign the bill, which passed the House on Wednesday night, six days after the Senate approved it . The bill replaces capital punishment with life in prison without the possibility of parole, but it only applies to future cases and has no effect on the 11 men on death row in Connecticut.

Does facing the death penalty make would-be killers rethink their actions? The question has long been at the center of arguments for and against the death penalty, but a committee formed by the National Research Council released a report Wednesday saying that previous studies, despite their claims, have not been able to fully answer the question and therefore should not be used in debates over capital punishment. The United States Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976.

Convicted child-killer Socorro Caro is expected to become the 12th person from Ventura County awaiting execution in California. Here is a look at the others and their crimes: * Justin Merriman was convicted in March for the 1992 rape and murder of Santa Monica College student Katrina Montgomery. * Kenneth McKinzie was convicted in 1999 for strangling 73-year-old Ruth Avril during a botched robbery at her Oxnard apartment building Dec. 21, 1995.

Early Thursday morning, after many hours of debate, the Connecticut state Senate voted 20 to 16 to approve a bill that would repeal the death penalty, positioning the state to be the 17th in the country to do so. The bill, which passed at 2:05 a.m., would replace the death penalty with life in prison without the possibility of release for those convicted of capital offenses in the future, the Hartford Courant reported . The 11 men on Connecticut's...

Los Angeles County residents look into their magic mirrors and see a humane and enlightened region with pragmatic criminal justice laws, unlike those backward, supposedly execution-crazy folks in places like Texas. The facts state otherwise. While the rest of California condemns felons to death at the same slowing pace as the rest of the nation, prosecutors in Los Angeles seek the death penalty aggressively. This single county sent more people to death row in 2009 than the entire state of Texas.