On April 23, the SAFE California Act, an initiative to replace California’s death penalty with a sentence of life without parole, qualified for the November 2012 ballot by presenting an ample number of qualified signatures. The initiative garnered almost 800,000 signatures for the measure that would repeal the death penalty and make capital crimes punishable by life in prison without parole. The initiative would also require inmates to work in prison to help pay restitution to the families of victims, and would send $30 million annually for three years to local law enforcement agencies to help solve murder and rape cases. Ron Briggs, who sponsored the 1978 initiative that expanded the death penalty in California, recently expressed support for repeal of the law. In a recent op-ed in the Los Angeles Times, Briggs endorsed the SAFE California campaign, saying “I still believe that society must be protected from the most heinous criminals, and that they don't deserve to ever again be free. But I'd like to see them serve their terms with the general prison population, where they could be required to work and pay restitution into the victims' compensation fund. There are few 'do-overs' in life, especially in politics. With the death penalty, though, 34 years later I have an opportunity to set things right.”
Records obtained by the Bay Area News Group in California show that the appeal costs for the last two men executed in the state were $1.76 million. At that rate, the cost of carrying out the executions of the 724 inmates still on death row could exceed $700 million if the death penalty is not repealed in November. Records show that the state and federal appeals for Clarence Ray Allen, the oldest and most recent death row inmate executed in the state, cost more than $761,000. Appeals for Stanley “Tookie” Williams cost the public nearly $1 million. These costs do not include the state's expenses in defending the convictions, the trial costs, or the extra costs attributed to death-row incarceration. If the death penalty is repealed by ballot initiative in November, some of the money saved will be used for pursuing unsolved cases. Moreover, those convicted of murder will be required to work and make compensation to victims' families. 
Use of the death penalty has decreased in South Carolina, and some state officials are pointing to the high costs and uncertainty of capital punishment as reasons for this decline. The state has had only one execution in the past three years, and the size of death row has declined almost 30% since 2005. No one was sentenced to death in 2011. Prosecutor David Pascoe initially planned to seek the death penalty for a mother who killed her two children, but later changed his mind, with cost being one factor: "Once you file for the death penalty, the clock gets moving and the money, the taxpayers start paying for that trial," he said. Representative Tommy Pope (pictured), a state legislator and former prosecutor who sought the death penalty for Susan Smith in a similar murder, now would tell victims' families to consider agreeing to a life-without-parole sentence instead of the death penalty. Life without parole was adopted by the state in 1995. It "allow[s] them a measure of closure that three retrials in a death penalty case never would," Pope said. 
In a recent op-ed in the Gainesville Sun, Florida Judge Charles M. Harris (pictured) called the state’s capital punishment system “totally defective” and “far less satisfactory” than alternatives like life without parole. Judge Harris, who has been on the bench for over 20 years, argued that life without parole “has rendered death by execution redundant and the amount we spend on it wasted.” He continued, “[D]eath by execution is excessively expensive. Most people who support the death penalty believe it is more cost effective than life in prison. Perhaps at one time, when executions were swift and sure, this may have been the case. It is not now. Most people knowledgeable about the subject will agree that the delay now built into the system, more trial preparation, much longer time to get to trial, much longer jury selections and trials, much more complicated and far more frequent appeals, and continuous motions, have increased the cost of capital punishment so that it is now many times the cost of keeping a prisoner in prison for life… Proper legal representation of the accused, particularly those sentenced to death, is an essential element of due process.” Read full op-ed below.
A recent study of the death penalty in Nevada compared the costs of defending capital and non-capital murder cases. The study, conducted by Dr. Terance Miethe of the Department of Criminal Justice at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, looked at the time spent by defense attorneys at various stages of a case. The study’s findings included: 
Following the recent handing down of a death sentence in Philadelphia, the Executive Director of the Atlantic Center for Capital Representation blamed the outcome on an inadequate indigent-defense system. Marc Bookman (pictured), writing in the Philadelphia Inquirer, reviewed the case and found, "There isn't a single motion filed by the attorneys in defense of their client. Nor is there a request for a jury questionnaire, which is standard in most jurisdictions that regularly handle capital cases, or for a mitigation specialist to prepare a case against the death penalty. Indeed, the only motion in the record was handwritten by the defendant. Prison logs indicate that his lawyers visited him a total of three times." Bookman said that such ineffective representation is the norm in Philadelphia capital cases because of "grossly inadequate" pay for court-appointed lawyers. "In other words," he wrote, "if we're asking attorneys to work for next to nothing, we are likely to get next to nothing from them." Read the full op-ed below.