I wrote last month about the bill to appeal the California death penalty proposed by Oakland State Senator Loni Hancock. Well, two unlikely proponents have just indicated their support for the bill. – Don Heller, the author of the 1978 legislation to expand the death penalty in California, and Jeanne Woodford, formerly the Director of the California Department of Corrections and warden at San Quentin.

You can’t argue with the facts. Since 1978, $4 billion has been spent administering the death penalty, while a total of 13 people have been executed. It’s estimated that California taxpayers spent $184 with capital punishment than it would have without capital punishment in 2009 alone. As Woodford said: “It is wasteful and counterproductive to public safety to spend our precious, precious resources pretending we have a death penalty when we know the sentence will not be carried out 99 percent of the time.”

Click here to see my previous blog on this subject.

Click here to read the San Francisco Chronicle article noting Heller and Woodford’s support.