By Kat Bouza
Listen to an audio story from Annenberg Radio News
Former Governors Gray Davis, Pete Wilson and George Deukmejian gathered with victims’ families Tuesday in Downtown Los Angeles to gather last-minute support against abolishing the death penalty.
While the death penalty is often considered a moral issue, Proposition 34 has instead focused on the high cost to California taxpayers.
Supporters have indicated stopping the death penalty would save the state nearly $100 million dollars — something the Superior Court deemed hyperbolic and forced Prop 34 supporters to remove from campaign materials.
Still, the race remains tight.
Numbers released today indicate that 48 percent of voters are against Proposition 34, compared to the 41 percent who wish to eliminate capital punishment.
Joe Bonaminio opposes the initiative. His son, Riverside police officer Ryan Bonaminio, was gunned down while on duty in November 2010.
“I don’t know about the financial end of it,” Bonamino admits. “Personally speaking, there’s no way in this world I would want to see the death penalty abolished. If you read the stories about the victims, I think you’d have a better understanding of why we want the death penalty.”
A non-partisan study by the California Legislative Analyst’s Office concludes that any projected savings due to the initiative may be off by “tens of millions of dollars.”
Governor Wilson underscored the potential threats to public safety, saying, “There is nothing that is more important than a climate of public safety for our citizens. There is nothing I would argue that possibly allows justice to be subordinated to false claims of savings, or even legitimate claims…There’s nothing in Prop 34 that guarantees that. “
But financial concerns aren’t what victims’ families care about.
Last December, Catherine Burke and her husband experienced the unthinkable — their 18 year-old daughter, Saskia Burke, was stabbed to death in the family’s Murrietta home by an acquaintance.
Burke says that, while seeking the death penalty for her daughter’s killer carries its own moral weight, nothing can match the suffering experienced by the Burke family: “I carry that guilt, I carry that regret and that shame and that horror. And he carries none of it. He smiled as he stabbed my daughter…Where do we draw the moral line for those that will never feel moral obligation or responsibility in society? We can’t call them moral creatures.”
Whatever the moral argument, if Prop 34 is defeated, all present today admit it would still only be a small justice for the many victims of those on California’s death row.
