California Voters Will Decide On Repealing Death Penalty Or Speeding Up Process

SACRAMENTO (CBS13) — The death penalty debate will go before voters in November with two closely watched measures on the ballot.

Proposition 62 would repeal the death penalty and replace it with life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.

Proposition 66 would make changes to speed up the appeal process in death penalty cases and impose time limits on death penalty review.

However voters decide on either initiative, the outcomes will be emotional for the families of murder victims.

It's been two decades since Sandy Friend's 8-year-old boy was kidnapped while walking to school. Michael Lyons' tortured body was found a day later in the Feather River, just up the street from his Marysville home.

She didn't miss a day in court all the way until she saw her son's convicted killer sentenced to death.

"He deserved the death penalty," she said.

That was about 17 years ago. She was sure Robert Boyd Rhoades would be executed by now, but he's still alive. He's one of 750 inmates on death row. Only 13 have been executed since California's death penalty took effect in 1978.

"I want to see Rhoades die," she said.

She's on a mission to change the law, working with prosecutors on Proposition 66 to speed up excecutions by ending repetitive appeals.

"It should not take somebody 25 years to get through the appellate process," said Sacramento County District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert.

Currently, there's a five-year wait for condemned inmates to be assigned a lawyer, and the measure would expand the pool of lawyers at the time of sentencing.

"Right now, there's not enough defense attorneys to represent these individuals," she said.

She says the amended law will end the anguish for families. But opponents say the issue isn't just one of morals, it's about money.

Ron Briggs is the spokesman behind a competing ballot measure, Proposition 62, that would repeal the death penalty.

"The cost to the counties—we're spending about $3 million dollars a death penalty case," he said. "Replace it with life without possibility of parole, throw 'em in prison for rest of their life. throw away the key."

A similar attempt to repeal the death penalty failed in 2012 by four points.