These two letters to the editor by our board member Nancy Oliveira really hit the mark.

San Francisco Chronicle
Doesn't add up
03/17/08

Editor - Can someone please explain to me why our teachers are getting pink slips and San Quentin gets a new death chamber? Our death penalty system costs taxpayers more than $114 million a year beyond the cost of simply keeping the convicts locked up for life.

Nancy Oliveira
San Francisco

San Jose Mercury News
Teachers cost less than death penalty
03/16/2008

Editor - How can our state government send teachers pink slips and do nothing to end the outrageously expensive death penalty system in our state? The use of executions is far more expensive than simply locking the convicts up for life. We should all be ashamed.

Nancy Oliveira
San Francisco

Comments

1. Comment by Rich Doberstein, May 1st, 2008 11:12pm

   Dear Mr. Davis Johnson,
   Can we agree that we both want the greater good?
   
   When there is a trade off between wrongly condemned and convicted murderers who escape prison to murder again, shall we agree to go with the bigger number? Since the death penalty has been reinstated, there have been 216 human beings wrongfully convicted. How many murder victims of escaped murderers have there been during that same time?
   




2. Comment by David Johnson, Apr 2nd, 2008 12:04pm

   Cost is the last reason to consider when applying the deathe penalty. I grew up in a prison community in Indiana. When I returned to the community on vacation as an adult I witnessed a halted escape attempt by a prisoner serving a life sentence. He went into a house across from the prison and took two women hostages, a daughter and mother. Needless to say after a long standoff he came out and was returned to prisonbut not before he had raped and murdered both women. I have no problem with execution except for one major drawback and that is wrongly convicting someone. I know this may have happened and it makes me very nervous to use the states power this way. To me there is a difference between murder and killing, although they both have the same outcome for the individual who dies. I do fear individuals being wrongly put to death, but some individuals can't be safely kept in prison.