California's governor has proposed closing the state's $20 billion budget gap with a drastic cuts-only approach, slashing funding for vital human services without working to increase revenue. Yet one state program seems to be immune from these cuts: the death penalty. We think the time has come to CUT THIS.

California spends vast amounts of money prosecuting death penalty cases and supporting death row. To avoid executing an innocent person, the death penalty process is long, complicated, and expensive. Each prosecution seeking death costs approximately $1.1 million more than a trial seeking permanent imprisonment, and with more than 700 inmates, California's death row is by far the largest and most costly in the nation. In total, California's death penalty system costs taxpayers $137 million per year.

Contrast that with just $11 million per year if we replace the death penalty with permanent imprisonment. Top that off with $400 million saved if we don't build a new death row, needed because the existing one is so old and overcrowded.

Today, if Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger were to convert the sentences of all those on death row to permanent imprisonment, the state would save $1 billion over the next five years without releasing a single prisoner.

But the death penalty is not on the chopping block. Rather than cutting the death penalty, the governor has focused on cutting the 'rehabilitation' side of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. Programs emphasizing education, rehabilitation, and addiction treatment have all seen cuts to their budgets, while death penalty prosecutions continue statewide.

Meanwhile, efforts to get California's budget under control are threatening the safety of the state's most vulnerable residents: seniors and people with disabilities who rely on in-home supportive care, working moms and their children surviving round after round of cuts to child care and CalWORKs, and children who depend on the Healthy Families program for insurance coverage. They all have faced dangerous erosions in access to health care and social services. Yet funding for death penalty prosecutions continues unabated.

Even victims of violent crime have felt the sting of the state budget cuts. Last year, the legislature and the governor took $50 million from the Victims' Compensation Fund, cutting money used to pay for funeral services, counseling, and medical care for crime victims and their families. Now the fund is running out of money because the state has prioritized execution above victims' services.

In addition, local law enforcement is also under threat. Los Angeles is currently unable to afford overtime pay for homicide investigations, and Oakland is about to lay off 80 police officers. Already, more than half of the murders from the last 10 years remain unsolved in Los Angeles County and Alameda County, where Oakland is located. Statewide, 45 percent of murders were not solved from 1999 to 2008. That means up to 10,000 killers walk the streets because we are not spending the time and money needed to catch them.

California must re-evaluate its budget priorities. Cuts to social services and effective public safety programs that protect communities and reduce crime threaten California families. Permanent imprisonment is a safe and cost-effective alternative to the death penalty, providing swift and certain justice, real public safety, and massive budget savings that can be passed on to taxpayers. Every day more and more Californians are calling on Gov. Schwarzenegger to CUT THIS. End the death penalty and save $1 billion in five years.

Watch this video about the subject.

Last week, Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) officers arrested a suspect they believe is the elusive "Grim Sleeper" serial killer responsible for 11 murders across South Los Angeles, dating as far back as 1985. The arrest made national news, in part because the LAPD broke the case by using a controversial new technique known as "familial DNA" searching. Prosecutors are now using this success to argue that familial DNA should be used more widely.

There's no question that the arrest in the "Grim Sleeper" case was an enormous relief for both the victims' families and for the South Los Angeles community that has lived under the shadow of these serial murders. But whether we should expand familial searching isn't just about the success in this case: it's about whether familial DNA searching is really the silver bullet prosecutors suggest, and whether privacy and civil rights concerns have been adequately addressed.

The answer to both questions, for the moment, is no. With traditional DNA forensic analysis, police take a DNA sample recovered from the crime scene, analyze various portions of it, and try to find an exact match in a database of DNA taken, for the most part, from people convicted of felonies. There is enough variation in human DNA that an exact match provides a very high likelihood that the crime-scene sample came from the same person as the match in the database, which usually provides potent evidence of guilt (or innocence, if the samples do not match). Familial DNA searching, on the other hand, goes a step further and works off the principle that if the DNA is a partial but not exact match, then the sample may be taken from somebody who is related to the database match. So all the police have to do is look at all that person's relatives and see if one of them might be the perpetrator, right?

Not so simple. First, there are serious privacy concerns. Currently, there are inadequate regulations about the storage of DNA in databases and their potential uses. DNA is much more than just a record of where we've been dropping stray hairs. It's our genetic information. It contains information about diseases and medical conditions we have, as well as those we might one day get. Genetic information has been linked not just to physical traits like hair and eye color, but aggression, susceptibility to addiction, and sexual orientation. And while the portions of DNA that are analyzed for inclusion in the database probably don't code for any traits (though that's still being debated by scientists), most jurisdictions retain the original biological samples and so have access to the full genetic information of people in the database.

Second, expanding the use of DNA investigations to familial searches widens the net of innocent individuals who could fall under suspicion and be investigated by police. The allure of DNA databases used in traditional forensic analyses has been that they can identify people who are guilty of a crime. But familial searching identifies only people who police know are not guilty of the crime, and potentially encourages police to go knocking on doors asking about family members, their histories, and their likelihood to commit a crime.

While proponents of traditional DNA investigations justify their use by arguing that the people included in them have been convicted of crimes (usually felonies) so their civil liberties should weigh differently against public safety, such arguments do not hold water with familial searching, where people who have never even had a speeding ticket can be reached through the database if one of their relatives has committed a crime. This is all the more problematic as the familial searches aren't very accurate. And they usually don't result in arrests — California has run familial searches of their DNA databases in eight other cases since 2008, and once before in the Grim Sleeper case. None of those nine searches ever led to an arrest.

Compounding this problem, because our criminal justice system disproportionately arrests and convicts people of color, those populations (particularly African-Americans) are vastly overrepresented in the DNA databases. Because familial searches extend the reach of databases beyond the offender to the offenders' family, the result is a genetic map of communities of color, and a law enforcement tool that is much more likely to solve crimes committed by black offenders than white offenders. That raises serious concerns of racial equity.

In the "Grim Sleeper" investigation, the LAPD took great care to consider privacy and civil rights in its investigation, but there are no assurances or guidelines to make sure that such practices are widespread. If the police are going to widen the use familial DNA searching, then the "Grim Sleeper" case is a good example of the kind of case that it should be used in, and the way it should be used.

California Attorney General Jerry Brown has issued guidelines limiting familial searching to the most serious, violent cases, only when all other investigative leads have been exhausted and there's an ongoing threat to public safety. And the authorities in the "Grim Sleeper" case didn't go knocking on doors of every partial match — they winnowed the list based on additional DNA tests, gathered circumstantial evidence that showed the suspect lived in the area where the killings occurred and was the right age to have committed the crimes over the course of more than two decades, and they obtained an identical DNA match before going public. But in California, as in other states, the standards that led to this kind of caution are voluntary — there's no statutory scheme governing the use of familial searches, and no oversight mechanism to ensure the rules are followed. We need both.

Finally, the success in the "Grim Sleeper" case doesn't justify expanding the reach of DNA databases — for example, to include people who have been merely arrested for a felony, but not convicted or even charged with a crime. The Grim Sleeper arrest was made using DNA taken from a person convicted of a felony, not a mere arrestee. Even familial DNA searching shouldn't have been necessary, because the Grim Sleeper suspect has at least two prior felony convictions. California and 14 other states currently take DNA samples from people merely arrested — not convicted — for a felony, making residents' civil liberties and genetic privacy turn on the discretion of one police officer as he or she writes his or her report. Fully one-third of Californians arrested for a felony are never convicted of a crime. That's not just bad policy, it raises serious constitutional concerns. The ACLU of Northern California is currently challenging the DNA profiling of arrestees under the Fourth Amendment.

Ahilan T. Arulanantham is director of immigrant rights and national security for the ACLU/SC.

I spent the morning of my second full day at Guant'namo observing the military commission hearing of Sudanese national Noor Uthman Muhammed. Muhammed was charged in December 2008 with murder in violation of the laws of war, attacking civilians, and providing material support to terrorism, among other acts allegedly committed between the years 1996 to 2002. A casual observer watching the proceeding could easily have mistaken it for a normal criminal trial. The room itself looks like a fine federal courtroom, with a large jury box (although it has only six seats) and a gallery with seating for about 50 people. The counsel tables are large and equipped with computer screens.

At a superficial level, the conduct of the proceedings also gives the appearance of a high-quality criminal court. The lawyers sound persuasive and well-prepared, as the military judge, Navy Capt. Moira Modzelewski, sits on a high bench in her black robe, listening carefully and asking probing questions.

But a few minutes after we've started, it becomes clear that this is not what American justice typically looks like. The hearing starts 30 minutes late, which is hardly unusual, but it appears the delay has arisen because the defendant has voluntarily chosen to be absent. The rules allow for this, and the attorneys submit a stipulation consenting to it. But we are left to wonder whether this is a form of protest, or instead a decision he made to avoid the lengthy and intrusive protocol that the government has created to transport detainees from their detention camp to the hearing a few miles away.

The main substantive issue on the agenda also appears at first glance to be fairly routine. The defense made a motion asking the court to release funds for a psychiatric expert. The parties argue the motion, debating how to apply a fairly standard body of criminal defense law governing the appointment of psychiatric experts.

But things get interesting when it comes time to explain why the defense needs the expert. The defense is not arguing that Muhammed is insane or mentally incompetent; instead they say they need the psychiatric evidence because he suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder due to his having been subjected to "unique interrogation methods" and "ill treatment" that resulted in extreme "trauma." As a result, they claim, his "post-capture" statements which the government wants to introduce at trial may not be "reliable" or "voluntary."

If it's not clear yet, the defense appears to be talking about torture. As numerous documents uncovered by the ACLU have revealed over the last several years, the government repeatedly tortured detainees held in U.S. custody - in Afghanistan, Guant'namo and elsewhere - in the years following 2002. Muhammed appears to fit the profile, although it's hard to tell because much of the defense's motion on this issue has been blacked out by military censors. Here's an example from the section describing the facts:

Noor has been in the custody of the United States since March 2002. During his detention in [redacted] and Guant'namo he has been subjected to [redacted]. The exact number of interrogations is unknown to the Defense. The interrogation records, especially from [redacted], are woefully deficient...Noor has spent significant time in Camps 5 and 6, under conditions equivalent to [redacted]...Noor's medical records demonstrate a failure of JTF-GITMO [i.e., the military] to treat his chronic medical problems. JTF refused counsel's requests to speak with Noor's medical providers about his chronic pain and treatment. Consistent with JTF policy, the Government has redacted Noor's medical records to conceal the identity of the providers and has steadfastly refused the Defense requests for access to these individuals.

Although we do not get to see for ourselves which interrogation methods he faced, the military defense lawyers say that the government has 17 statements of his that it wants to introduce at trial. Of course, no criminal defense lawyer whose client is going to trial would ever let a defendant talk to the government 17 times, and, one would think, no rational person would submit to 17 interrogations knowing that the statements could be used against him at trial. But this is not rational, it's Guant'namo. Muhammed did not have a lawyer during these interrogations, and he was not given the choice to stop them.

You might also think that the defense does not need a psychiatrist's report to explain why these statements cannot be admitted at trial. In normal criminal court, if the police interrogate someone and refuse to allow the detainee to stop the interrogation once, even without a lawyer present, then the statements obtained from the coercive interrogation cannot be used at trial. If this happens 17 times, there should be absolutely no question that the statements cannot be used.

But this is not ordinary criminal court. Guant'namo has its own rules, recently enacted to comply with the amended Military Commissions Act of 2009 (PDF) but not ratified until the night before the military commissions reconvened under Obama. Buried in Section 949a(b)(3)(B) is a handy little provision stating that "A statement of the accused that is otherwise admissible shall not be excluded from trial by military commission on grounds of alleged coercion or compulsory self-incrimination so long as the evidence complies with the provisions of section 948r." Section 948r, in turn, allows the admission at trial of any statement that is "voluntarily given." You could be forgiven for thinking that any statement obtained by coercion isn't "voluntarily given," but under the Guant'namo rules, you would be wrong. Instead, it is up to the military judge to determine whether a statement is "voluntarily given," and the judge can take into account a number of factors, including "the circumstances of the conduct of military and intelligence operations during hostilities."

It gets better. The defense also says the psychiatric expert's testimony will be relevant to assessing the credibility of statements by other detainees - statements that the government also wants to introduce in this case. At first this confuses me - the statements made during the interrogations of other people are hearsay, so in a normal criminal trial, they would be inadmissible. So why would the defense need to rebut them at trial?

But that basic principle of criminal law is also absent from the Guant'namo rules. Section - take a breath - 949a(b)(3)(D)(ii)(III), is a rule allowing the judge to admit hearsay statements by other detainees if, among other things, the judge determines that "the unique circumstances of military and intelligence operations during hostilities" or the "adverse impacts on military or intelligence operations that would likely result from the production of the witness" justify ignoring the hearsay rule. So the judge may well consider the statements of other detainees obtained using "unique interrogation methods," without allowing the defense a chance to ask those detainees what the soldiers were doing to them when they took the statements.

As the hearing goes on, more and more glimpses into the rules of Guant'namo's netherworld pop up. The military judge makes a passing reference to her ongoing review of documents that are being sent directly from the government to her, without defense counsel seeing them, apparently because they are classified. There appear to be hundreds of these, which she receives in batches of 60'80 documents at a time. While issues involving classified information arise in criminal trials for various reasons, it is fundamental that the government cannot introduce evidence against the defendant without allowing him to see it. But, yet again, that is not how the Guant'namo rules work. Section 949p-6(c) of the Military Commissions Act appears to allow the government to introduce classified evidence against the defendant without letting him see it, as long as the defendant gets a redacted version of the evidence that "is consistent with affording the accused a fair trial."

Shortly afterward the hearing is over, we are left to talk to the reporters - who are just as confused as we are - while the lawyers from both sides scurry off to a closed meeting with the judge. There have been several of these closed meetings in the last few days, which none of us get to see. The escort soldiers are willing to let the reporters talk to us on the sidewalk, but not to let us ride in the same van, although we are going to the same media tent where we can talk to them for as long as we like. This is utterly irrational, but I simply accept it - just another Guant'namo rule.

But in the hours after the hearing, I am more and more troubled as I think about everything that happened. Along with two of the other NGO monitors, I decide to go for a swim to clear my head. We walk down to what seems like the perfect beach - the sand looks lovely, the ocean is bathwater warm, and there's even an iguana strolling by. But as we go in, the sand turns to rock and then to seagrass. I can't wade anymore, so I dive in and open my eyes in the water, straining to see the pretty fish I've been told are here. But the water is murky and opaque, nothing like how it looked from the shore.