Death Row

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.

Carlos DeLuna was, in all likelihood, murdered by the state of Texas on Dec. 7, 1989. It's hard to come to any other conclusion after reading an exhaustive analysis of his case published online by a Columbia law school professor and his students. And he may not be the only innocent death row inmate executed by that notably bloodthirsty state. Cameron Todd Willingham, a man whose conviction for setting a fire that killed his three young daughters was based on spectacularly shoddy forensics work, was injected with a death cocktail on Feb. 17, 2004.

White supremacist gang hit man Billy Joe Johnson got what he asked for from the Orange County jury that convicted him of first-degree murder last month: a death sentence. It wasn't remorse for his crimes or a desire for atonement that drove him to ask for execution; it was the expectation that conditions on death row would be more comfortable than in other maximum-security prisons and that any date with the executioner would be decades away if it came at all. Although executions are carried out with comparative speed in states such as Virginia, where Beltway sniper John Allen Muhammad was put to death Tuesday night, capital punishment in California has become so bogged down by legal challenges as to be a nearly empty threat, say experts on both sides of the issue.

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?

As a child, Heath Wilkins liked to set fires and break into houses looking for knives and money. He plotted to poison his mother when he was 10, and at 16 he stabbed a convenience store clerk to death as she begged for her life. Kevin Stanford plunged into crime at age 9. He was a drug addict at 12 and was arrested for robbery, burglary, assault, attempted rape and other crimes by 17. That's when he raped, robbed and murdered a gas station attendant.

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.

A videotape of the 1992 execution of Robert Alton Harris, prepared for a lawsuit challenging the use of the gas chamber but never shown in court, has been destroyed at a judge's order, court records show. Newly unsealed documents in federal court disclose that the tape was destroyed after state lawyers agreed that they would not offer any new witnesses' testimony about executions if the gas chamber suit is retried.

California prison officials executed 76-year-old murderer Clarence Ray Allen at the state prison here early today after his final appeal was turned down by the U.S. Supreme Court. His death was announced at 12:38 a.m. by Elaine Jennings of the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. Allen, who turned 76 Monday, was by far the oldest of the 13 convicts executed in the state since California restored the death penalty in 1977 and the second oldest in the nation.

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.

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.

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...

Mumia Abu-Jamal, whose conviction in the slaying of a Philadelphia police officer became a major battleground of the 20th century's racial divide, has lost his latest appeal to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. In an order dated March 26, the state high court announced that it was affirming a lower court order in the case; the lower court had rejected Abu-Jamal's complaint that some aspects, including forensic evidence, were unfairly handled.  Abu-Jamal, a former Black Panther and radio journalist, was convicted of the 1981 fatal shooting of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner.

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.

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?

A sharply divided federal appeals court on Monday denied a stay of execution for a Montana man who has been on Death Row longer than anyone else in the nation, moving him one step closer to being put to death by lethal injection Wednesday. In a 2-1 decision, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, based in San Francisco, denied the stay to Duncan P. McKenzie, 43, who was convicted of murdering Lana Harding, a rural Montana schoolteacher, in 1974.

A bitterly divided Supreme Court on Tuesday tossed out a jury verdict won by a New Orleans man who spent 14 years on death row and came within weeks of execution because prosecutors had hidden a blood test and other evidence that would have proven his innocence. The 5-4 decision delivered by Justice Clarence Thomas shielded the New Orleans district attorney's office from being held liable for the mistakes of its prosecutors. The evidence of their misconduct did not prove "deliberate indifference" on the part of then-Dist.

'On Death Row' Where: Investigation Discovery When: 7 and 10 p.m. Friday Rating: TV-14 (may be unsuitable for children under the age of 14)

Unlike many a modern filmmaker, compelled to excavate the intimate and even mundane for life's meaning, German director Werner Herzog believes in extremes. During his impressively prolific career, he has consistently sought out the outcasts and the heroes, the misfits and prophets, the dreamers of fevered and spectacular dreams. The subjects of his 25 feature-length documentaries include a deaf and blind woman, a freestyle mountain climber, the lone survivor of an airplane crash and a man who lived with grizzlies.