Daily CA – District attorney and former warden debate death penalty on campus

Former San Quentin prison warden Jeanne Woodford, pictured above, debates Contra Costa district attorney Mark A. Peterson about Proposition 34, during a seminar in Wheeler Hall Auditorium.
Joe Wright/Staff
Former San Quentin prison warden Jeanne Woodford, pictured above, debates Contra Costa district attorney Mark A. Peterson about Proposition 34, during a seminar in Wheeler Hall Auditorium.

By Jacob Brown | Staff

Hundreds of students packed Wheeler Auditorium Wednesday to hear a debate between the Contra Costa County district attorney and a former prison warden on Proposition 34, a ballot measure that aims to end California’s death penalty at the polls in November.

The debate was between former San Quentin State Prison warden Jeanne Woodford and District Attorney Mark Peterson and was this week’s presentation for the campus course Political Science 179, Haas professor Alan Ross’s undergraduate colloquium on political science.

Prop. 34 will replace all mentions of the death sentence in California law with a life sentence without parole. The proposition aims to save a billion dollars over the next five years, which will be reallocated toward investigating unsolved crimes.

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