This is a typical bed used in death penalty situations, most often the "death by lethal injection" method. image:19323:0::0

The California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice (CCFJ) issued a 117-page report, exposing a “dysfunctional” death penalty system, one that has the biggest backlog of cases in the nation. As of this writing, 673 inmates wait on death row, 79 from that group are still without appointed attorneys to prepare their automatic appeals to the California Supreme Court. “It is a law in name only, not in reality” the report stated. There have been no executions since 2005 when a federal judge ordered that “flaws in the method of delivering” the three drug cocktail, used in California (CA). be revised.

Interestingly enough, earlier this year the Supreme Court upheld Kentucky’s lethal injection system, which is “nearly identical to California’s.” On the rare occasion that a killer is executed in CA, it takes about seventeen years from conviction to death. The national average is a ten year wait. The CCFJ report went on to state; “Families of murder victims are cruelly deluded in believing that justice will be delivered, with finality, during their lifetimes.”

The CCFJ voted that CA would save hundreds of millions throughout the criminal justice system if capitol punishment were eliminated since “most condemned inmates are, basically, given life sentences anyway,” as reported in the Desert Dispatch (AP) July 1, 2008. The Commission did recommend that CA. double the amount spent on capitol punishment and use that amount to hire more defence attorneys and prosecutors.

The ninth U.S. Circuit of Appeals has ruled against prosecutors in 38 of the 54 death penalty cases since the death penalty was re-introduced in CA in the middle seventies.

The commission recommends changing the law limiting the number of crimes eligible for the death penalty. Those crimes falling into that category would be limited to those committing multiple murders, torturing their victims, killing law enforcement officials or witnesses to such crimes. The report went on to say that far too many inmates have poor representation, and it is believed that flaw is likely to cause a death penalty case to be tossed out. One possible fix could be to increase the number of state public defenders by one-hundred percent, as suggested by the CCFAJ. This was the final report done by the commission which disbanded on July 1, 2008.