As noted in yesterday's News Scan, the anti-death-penalty advocates held press conferences yesterday announcing they had the signatures to put their repeal initiative on the ballot.  This is no surprise, as it was widely known they had the signatures.  Sam Stanton has this article in the Sacramento Bee, an expanded version of the one linked yesterday, including a photo array of the 13 murderers whose usual appeals have been completed.

Kent Scheidegger, legal director for the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation in Sacramento, said settling that issue could help executions resume.

"The opposition makes much of the fact that only 13 death sentences have been carried out, but about that many have reached the end of the pipeline and are now ready to be carried out, blocked only by the unnecessary and pointless lethal injection litigation," he wrote in an email.

Other states have changed procedures and moved forward with executions, but California has not put anyone to death since 2006 because of the legal battle.

Scheidegger added that the cost savings cited by death penalty opponents are inaccurate.

"I hope the voters reject it," he said, noting that the costs of caring for death-penalty inmates for the rest of their lives "escalate dramatically with age."

A Field Poll issued in September found most Californians - 68 percent - still support capital punishment.

Bob Egelko has this article in the San Francisco Chronicle.  Accompanying an article is an online poll.  Although online polls don't mean much due to the self-selection of respondent, it wouldn't hurt to take a minute to vote "no" on repeal.

Howard Mintz has this article in the San Jose Mercury-News:

"If the death penalty is retained, it is now likely that most sentences will be carried out," said Kent Scheidegger, legal director of the Sacramento-based Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, a leading advocacy group for the death penalty.

The reason for that prediction is the Supreme Court's crackdown on the Ninth Circuit last term in three important decisions:  Walker v. Martin, Harrington v. Richter, and Cullen v. Pinholster.