California (Sacramento) – Senator Loni Hancock (D-Berkeley) welcomed today’s vote of 5-2 by the Assembly Public Safety Committee in support of SB 490, her bill to replace the death penalty with permanent imprisonment. This was the first vote in the California Legislature in 33 years on the death penalty, since it was reinstated in 1978. “This is a welcome first step to correcting an expensive failure of our justice system. The death penalty has proven to be ineffective in deterring crime while costing taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars a year. It is not protecting us; it is bankrupting us,” Hancock testified before the Committee Continue reading: In case you missed it – Senator Hancock’s press release re: SB 490′s passage out of Assembly Public Safety on July 7, 2011 – and a link to view the recorded hearing