California Sentencing More People To Death Than Southern States

“Texas is called the Death Belt. Harris County is the buckle.” That’s how one judge described the death penalty in the Lone Star State 15 years ago. In those days, Texas produced 40 death sentences per year, and no one blinked if Harris County accounted for 10 of them. These days, Texas is at the epicenter of a different trend: The Deep South has witnessed a sharp, sustained, and unmistakable drop in death verdicts. So far this year (as of Sept. 6, 2015) Texas has not had a single new death sentence. Neither has Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, or Virginia.

While the Deep South has moved away from capital punishment, Riverside County, California, has become the buckle of a new Death Belt. It produced seven new death sentences in the first half of this year. That’s more than California’s other 57 counties combined, more than any other state, and more than the whole Deep South combined. An hour’s drive from Los Angeles, with a population of 2.3 million (6 percent of California’s population), Riverside has produced more death sentences since 2010 than any other county in America except one—Los Angeles County, which is four times its size.”

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Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian (The Point) hosts of The Young Turks discuss. Tell us what you think in the comment section below.