Mike Farrell, president of Death Penalty Focus of California, spoke about his work as a death penalty abolitionist during an Oct. 10 presentation 
sponsored by Public Interest Law Foundation and the Review of Law and Social Justice.
Farrell, who is more popularly known for his career as an actor on the television show M*A*S*H, read excerpts about the death penalty and its wrongs against society, written by many notable authors and lawyers.
Aside from the moral argument against the death penalty, the procedure is also not economically sound, he said, as the state of California spends approximately $250,000 on each execution.
“Sentencing someone to death ends up costing two to three times as much as putting them through a simple trial with the sentence being life without parole and keeping him in prison for 40 years,” he said.
Farrell said he first got involved in the cause against the death penalty because he was “raised to believe that killing is wrong” and saw a contradiction in the way the system is run. For instance, he said, this country is run on the premise of equality for all, yet discrimination runs rampant on death row.
“The specter of racism is threaded throughout the death system and the disproportion of colored people on death row cannot be denied,” Farrell said. “Are we comfortable with a system that kills its innocent, is racist at 
its core and punishes the poor?”
The mental condition of prisoners should also be taken into consideration, he said. The Human Rights Watch reports that a quarter-of-a-million people in prisons are mentally damaged, and the funds being used to execute them would be more effective if used to afford them treatment in mental institutions.
While the United States Supreme Court has taken international views into consideration for recent cases, Farrell said he believes the death penalty is just one of many examples of American exceptionalism.
“Because we’re the leading nation, we often feel that we don’t have to abide by the laws others are held to,” he said.
The American public must put pressure on its government to act in order to effect change, he said, because indifference and inaction makes Americans just as much at fault for the lives lost to the death penalty, he said.
“The casual taking of life by the state dehumanizes not only those who do the killing, but those of us who tolerate it,” Farrell said.
For more information on how to get involved, visit www.deathpenalty.org.
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