Why Is Los Angeles Handing Out More Death Sentences than All of Texas?

Almost a week after election day, the California attorney general race is still too close to call.

At present, Los Angeles District Attorney Steve Cooley, a Republican, leads San Francisco D.A. Kamala Harris, a Democrat, by less than one percent. With an estimated 1.3 million provisional and absentee ballots yet to be counted, the race is up for grabs.

If the biracial Harris wins, she would be the first female, first African-American and first South Asian attorney general in California. If Cooley wins, he can partly credit his campaign’s decision to stress that Harris is anti-death penalty, a stance which made her appear soft on crime to voters.

Cooley has arguably made a career out of recommending capital punishment for convicts. Although the majority of California counties pursue life in prison rather than the death penalty for violent criminals, a few counties in southern California were responsible for generating a whopping 83 percent of the state’s death sentences last year. Los Angeles County, which Cooley oversees as D.A., is a prime example. According to the American Civil Liberties Union, L.A. County handed down more death sentences in 2009 than the entire state of Texas.

So, what’s the problem here?

It’s no secret that minorities are overrepresented in the criminal justice system. African Americans, for example, make up 29 percent of California’s prison population yet just 6.6 percent of the state’s general population. This means that people of color will make up a disproportionate amount of those sentenced to death as well.

Even if you’re not morally opposed to the death penalty or don’t believe the cards are unfairly stacked against minorities in the criminal justice system, consider the tremendous expenses California racks up by sending people to death row. The ACLU estimates that over the next five years, California will have to dole out $1 billion to keep people on death row, a jaw-dropping figure considering that the state is so deeply in debt that its credit rating has plummeted and the hours and positions of many state employees have been cut. The damage death row is doing to the state is a major reason why Kamala Harris opposes capital punishment.

In an interview last year, Harris called death row a “flawed system in terms of what we need to do around an efficient use of limited resources in the criminal justice system. Not housing octogenarians on Death Row could put 1,000 more cops on the street.”

Considering that death sentences reportedly cost Californians some $137 million a year, it’s irresponsible for Cooley to suggest that he’s doing the state a service by pursuing the death penalty for convict after convict. California now has the dubious distinction of being the U.S. state with the busiest death row. Today, more than 700 inmates sit on death row in the state, some of whom, no doubt, are innocent.

Residents know firsthand how the state’s struggling economy has affected schools, housing and health care. So it’s high time Cooley stopped adding to the problem by using the death penalty as a way of showing he’s 'tough' on crime. As L.A.'s district attorney, Cooley’s done enough damage. Imagine what could happen if he becomes California’s next attorney general. Tell him that California doesn’t need any one else on death row!

Photo Credit: Steve Cooley for Attorney General