Why would a California convict opt for a death sentence? With few executions and better living conditions, why not?
By Mary A. Fischer November 2011 ATLANTIC MAGAZINE
As an Orange County jury debated in 2009 whether the white supremacist Billy Joe Johnson should live or die for murdering a fellow gang member, he asked to be sent to death row. Not because he felt any sudden remorse for the five people he’d killed over the years—“I commit crimes when people piss me off,” he once explained, matter-of-factly—but because Johnson believed he’d have better living conditions, including liberal phone privileges, a bigger cell, and daily human interaction, at San Quentin’s death row than he would at Pelican Bay, one of the state’s toughest maximum-security prisons, where he was serving a 46-year-to-life sentence, primarily in solitary confinement.
He also knew that the odds were good that he might never be executed. Bogged down by constitutional challenges and appeals, California’s system takes an average of 20 years to move a prisoner from conviction to execution.
Experts on both sides of the death-penalty debate have long agreed that California’s system is the nation’s costliest and least efficient. This June, a landmark report by Paula M. Mitchell, a professor at Loyola Law School, and Arthur L. Alarcón, a senior judge on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, unearthed new data that reveal just how bad the system is.
Their report showed that since the current death-penalty statute was enacted in 1978, taxpayers have spent more than $4 billion on only 13 executions, or roughly $308 million per execution. As of 2009, prosecuting death-penalty cases cost upwards of $184 million more each year than life-without-parole cases. Housing, health care, and legal representation for California’s current death-row population of 714—the largest in the country—account for $144 million in annual extra costs. If juries continue to send an average of 20 convicts to San Quentin’s death row each year, and executions continue at the present rate, by 2030 the ranks of the condemned will have swelled to more than 1,000, and California’s taxpayers will have spent $9 billion to execute a total of 23 inmates.
“I was stunned by the report,” said Loni Hancock, a Democratic state senator from Oakland and a member of the senate budget committee. Hancock had spent the previous five months agonizing over deep cuts to California’s general budget, and “it broke my heart,” she said. “That’s when I decided the time had come for Californians to reconsider the death penalty.”
In late June, Hancock introduced SB 490, the first bill to propose replacing death sentences with no-parole life imprisonment, only to withdraw it eight weeks later when she realized she didn’t have the votes to get it out of committee. Now anti-death-penalty activists are taking their case to the people. Buoyed by the Alarcón-Mitchell report and the media coverage it garnered, California Taxpayers for Justice kicked off a ballot-initiative drive in October to get the required 504,760 voter signatures in time for the 2012 general election.
Law-enforcement groups want to keep the penalty in place. “We share the frustration of death-penalty opponents,” says Cory Salzillo, the legislative director of the California District Attorneys Association. “But we should pursue remedies to fix the problems rather than repeal it altogether.” (Hancock’s own stepson, Casey Bates, is known as an aggressive prosecutor in Alameda County’s District Attorney’s office, with several murder convictions under his belt. He declined to comment on SB 490, but Hancock told me: “We haven’t talked about it.”) To many advocates for victims, the initiatives are an insult. “You can’t take justice away from the victims’ families, not after everything they’ve gone through,” contends Harriet Salarno, the president of Crime Victims United of California, which she founded after her daughter’s murder. “No-parole life sentences will never give them the closure they seek. Sure, the death penalty is costly, but that’s because it’s not executed efficiently. Look at Texas and Virginia. They limit the years of appeals. We should copy them.”
In Texas, where the appeals process has been streamlined, nine executions were carried out in the first eight months of this year, and in Virginia, it took a relatively speedy seven years from the arrest of the Beltway sniper John Allen Muhammad to his execution in 2009. Other states—Colorado, Kansas, Maryland, and Montana—have been struggling to reform or abolish their capital-punishment systems.
Historically, polls show that Californians’ support for capital punishment mirrors the nation’s, with more than 60 percent in favor of it. “Proponents of repealing the death penalty start at a disadvantage,” says Robert Stern, the president of the Center for Governmental Studies. “They will need the endorsement of the state’s top Democrats. If Jerry Brown and particularly Dianne Feinstein were to support a repeal, it would have a better chance of passing. If either opposes, then I doubt the voters would pass it.” And what California does will doubtless shape the behavior of other states.
For the time being, Governor Brown has no comment on this issue, says a spokesman. As governor in 1977, he vetoed a pro-death-penalty bill, and last April, he stopped a $356 million expansion of San Quentin’s death row, calling the cost “unconscionable” in a time of deep budget cuts to education and social services.
State Senator Hancock says she may reintroduce her life-imprisonment bill in January, when voters will start to feel California’s most recent round of budget cuts. “But let’s first see how the voter drive goes,” she told me. Billy Joe Johnson, meanwhile, got his wish—sort of. He’s on death row, alone in a cell with a TV that his lawyer bought for him. But a few months ago, after hurling threats at guards, he became a Grade B prisoner, which means his life must now seem almost not worth living. He lost all his phone privileges and physical-contact visits and is nearly back to the conditions he came from, with 24-hour lockdown, strictly limited human interaction, and only three outdoor walks a week, by himself, in a wire-fenced yard the length of two small cars.
Mary A. Fischer is an award-winning journalist and former senior staff writer for GQ Magazine, where she earned two National Magazine Award nominations. She regularly covers the legal field and is currently a feature writer for Scotusblog.com [ http://www.scotusblog.com/ ].
Texas Prison System Goes To Two Meals A Day On Weekends To Cut Costs
The Texas Prison Museum is shown in Huntsville, Texas 07 December 2002. Texas prisoners began eating two meals per day on weekends in April as part of a cost-cutting measure.
First Posted: 10/21/11 05:51 PM ET Updated: 10/22/11 12:20 PM ET
As the weak economy continues to hit cash-strapped city and state governments, some are passing the costs on to prisoners.
More than 20,000 Texas prisoners have been eating two meals a day on weekends since April, in a bid by the prison system to cut food-service costs, The New York Times reports.
The two-a-day weekend meal plan is part of an effort to cut the Texas Department of Criminal Justice's budget by $2.8 million; other cost-cutting measures include giving prisoners sliced bread instead of hamburger or hot dog buns and offering powdered milk instead of carton milk, according to The NYT.
The Department of Criminal Justice cuts are part of an overall plan to slash spending in Texas. Legislators passed a budget that reduced state spending by more than $15 billion and cut 5,700 jobs in the state, the Star-Telegram reported.
Texas isn't the only state taking measures to cut the costs of housing prisoners. Florida lawmakers passed two bills earlier this week that would expand the state's prison rehabilitation program and reduce jail time for non-violent criminals in a bid to make some headway in the state's $2.3 billion budget deficit, according to Bloomberg.
Washington state's Department of Corrections is looking to stave off cuts as the state government encourages agencies to help it find ways to cut $2 billion from its budget, The Seattle Times reports. Under one reduction proposal, more than 10,000 currently supervised former prisoners participating in the state's version of parole would become unsupervised. Other proposals include increasing prisoners' health care co-pays from $3 to $4, The Seattle Times reports.
California started a large-scale prison "realignment" program last month that transferred responsibility for the state’s lower-level offenders to county prisons in an effort to cut costs.
Prison system cuts aren't the only indication of suffering state and local economies. One county in Georgia is considering employing inmates as firefighters in an effort to ease budget woes. Other areas around the country are seeing extreme effects from the crisis; Harrisburg, Pennsylvania was the sixth city to file for bankruptcy protection in 2011, according to NPR.
Updated: October 16, 2011, 3:39 AM ET ESPN.com news services
LOS ANGELES -- Dewey Bozella landed a hard right cross on his opponent's jaw at the final bell, and the 52-year-old boxer raised his arms in victory.
After 26 years behind bars for a murder he didn't commit, Bozella triumphantly realized a dream deferred in his first and only professional fight.
Bozella won his pro boxing debut Saturday night, beating Larry Hopkins by unanimous decision in the latest stunning chapter of a remarkable life.
AP Photo/Jae Hong
Dewey Bozella raises his arms in the fourth round of a boxing match with Larry Hopkins in Los Angeles. Bozell, 52, won his debut by unanimous decision after 26 years wrongfully in prison.
"I used to lay in my cell and dream about this happening," Bozella said. "It was all worth it. It was my dream come true."
Bozella caught the eye of Golden Boy Promotions, which is promoting the Oct. 15 card, after his life was chronicled in July on ESPN's annual ESPY Award show. Bozella was honored with the Arthur Ashe Courage Award on the show.
Wrongfully convicted of killing 92-year-old Emma Crapser in 1983, Bozella earned two college degrees and became the light heavyweight champion of Sing Sing before he was exonerated in 2009.
Golden Boy fulfilled Bozella's dream by putting him on the undercard of Bernard Hopkins' bout with Chad Dawson. His victory, punctuated by that devastating punch to Larry Hopkins' head at the final bell, brought the crowd to its feet.
"This was my first and last fight," said Bozella, who lives in Newburgh, N.Y. "It's a young man's game. I did what I wanted to do, and I'm happy. I appreciate everybody that made this possible. This has been one of the greatest experiences of my life."
Despite a complete lack of physical evidence, Bozella was convicted of killing Crapser on her way home after a night out playing bingo. He maintained his innocence throughout a quarter-century behind bars, even turning down a plea-bargain offer in 1990 that would have required admitting guilt, until his conviction was overturned.
Bozella battered the winless Hopkins throughout the second half of their four-round fight. Hopkins, no relation to Bernard Hopkins, also lost points for losing his mouthpiece six times in the final round, apparently exhausted and unable to match Bozella's conditioning.
"This guy is an incredible athlete, a remarkable man," said Bernard Hopkins, the 46-year-old light heavyweight champion who trained with Bozella in recent weeks. "I spent five years in the penitentiary, but not for something I didn't do. We understand what it takes to overcome your circumstances. Unless you've done it, you can't understand it. I have all respect for what Dewey has done with his life."
~~~~~~ Bozella's Relentlessness Wins Out Again All along, Dewey Bozella's message to anyone who would listen was this: Never give up. On Saturday, in his first and only pro fight, he again practiced what he has preached, willing himself to a win, writes Cal Fussman. Story .. http://espn.go.com/boxing/story/_/id/7108941/dewey-bozella-relentlessness-again-pays-off ~~~~~~
Bozella didn't have a younger man's hand speed, but he moved with a confident ease and showed strong technique in the ring, constantly moving his head and outmaneuvering Larry Hopkins. Both cruiserweights absorbed big shots in the first two rounds, but Bozella was never hurt beyond a welt near his left eye.
Bozella dominated the fourth round, even finishing the final seconds in style. After Hopkins spit his mouthpiece into the air and flailed at it with his boxing gloves, Bozella decked him with a right cross at the bell, leaving Hopkins woozy on the ropes.
With his family and friends gathered around him in the ring, Bozella raised his gloves in victory when the judges favored him 39-36, 38-37 and 38-36.
Bozella has never lived without tragedy. His father beat his pregnant mother to death when he was 9 years old, and two of his brothers were murdered on the Brooklyn streets.
Four months after he moved to Poughkeepsie, N.Y., in 1977, he was suspected of killing Crapser, but not indicted by a grand jury. Bozella cleaned up a life of petty crime and embraced boxing at a gym run by former heavyweight champion Floyd Patterson, but he was arrested and convicted of Crapser's murder in December 1983 on the strength of false testimony from other convicts.
Bozella's story attracted the attention of Oscar De La Hoya and his business associates, who arranged for Bozella to fight in Los Angeles after he passed the California State Athletic Commission's fitness requirements.
Although the crowd loved Bozella's fight, he said he had "done what I needed to do." He hopes to spend his life training fighters in Newburgh.
"I'm going to concentrate on the Dewey Bozella Foundation, which really means opening a gym in my town," Bozella said. "Because there are no gyms, and I'd like to see kids who are on the street have something productive to do. No more fighting for me."
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