SACRAMENTO — A bill that seeks to abolish California's death penalty advanced Thursday after its first legislative hearing with support from the author of the state's death penalty and a former warden who presided over executions.

Sen. Loni Hancock, D-Berkeley, said she introduced the bill because California can no longer afford a capital punishment system that is both expensive and ineffective as it battles persistent multibillion-dollar budget deficits.

It has the backing of two Nevada County residents — Nick and Amanda Wilcox, whose 19-year-old daughter Laura was gunned down in 2001 by a mentally ill man, Scott Thorpe, in Grass Valley. The Wilcoxes traveled to the hearing Thursday in Sacramento to lend their support to the measure.

“We've been advocates for ending the death penalty for a long time,” said Nick Wilcox.

“We add our voice because the death penalty is often justified in the name of victims, and not all victims support it,” Amanda Wilcox said. “We were opposed to the death penalty before Laura was killed, and after she was killed it did not change our view. We don't believe in responding to violence with more violence.”

Former Nevada County District Attorney Mike Ferguson did not seek the death penalty in Thorpe's case, which was in line with the family's wishes, Nick Wilcox said.

“We believe healing comes from within, not with what happens to the offender,” Amanda Wilcox said.

If eventually signed into law, the bill would put the question before voters in November 2012.

The Assembly Public Safety Committee voted 5-2 along party lines in favor of SB490 after hearing testimony from Sacramento attorney and former prosecutor Donald Heller and former San Quentin State Prison warden Jeanne Woodford.

Heller wrote the proposition approved by state voters in 1978 that restored the death penalty. Woodford oversaw four executions but now heads Death Penalty Focus, which opposes them.

“After each execution, someone on my staff would say, ‘Is the world safer because we did our jobs tonight?' We all knew the answer was no,” Woodford said.

“Life without possibility of parole is the solution for addressing what opponents and proponents of the death penalty recognize is a broken, costly, failed system that does not provide meaningful public safety or justice to our families despite the billions of dollars spent by the state of California,” she said.

She and Heller cited a recent study by a federal appellate judge and a university law professor that found California taxpayers spend $184 million annually to try death penalty cases, defend the state through appeals and incarcerate condemned inmates. Most of the 714 condemned inmates on the nation's most populous Death Row are more likely to die of old age than lethal injection, the study found.

“I fervently believe that capital punishment should be abolished,” Heller said. “It's costing the state a huge amount of money.”

The researchers, 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Arthur L. Alarcon and Loyola Law School Professor Paula M. Mitchell, calculated that capital punishment has cost California $4 billion since it was reinstated 34 years ago, yet just 13 inmates have been executed — none in the past five years.

Hancock's bill would amend state law to require life in prison without parole for those convicted of what are now capital crimes, including people currently on death row. It would put the question before voters on the November 2012 ballot.

Hancock's bill was opposed by prosecutors, victims' rights groups and associations representing police and sheriffs.

It now goes to the Assembly Appropriations Committee.

In March, Illinois became the 16th state to abolish the death penalty. Hancock argued California should become the 17th.

“At a time when there is no money to meet the basic needs of our people, we can't afford a punishment that Judge Alarcon calls a punishment in theory only,” Hancock said. “It is not helping to protect our people — it is helping to bankrupt us.”

California sent four murderers to death row in the first six months of this year, compared with 13 in the same period last year and 21 in the second half of 2010, according to state attorney general's office, which handles death penalty appeals.

“We cannot put a price on justice,” said Cory Salzillo, legislative director for the California District Attorneys Association. He said retroactively commuting condemned inmates sentences to life would probably violate the constitutional separation of powers between the Legislature and judiciary that imposed the sentences. He also called it “extremely unfair to communities that expect justice and to victims' families that have been promised ultimate closure.”

The system is unquestionably expensive and unwieldy, he said, yet lawmakers have consistently rejected reforms that would speed executions and thereby cut their cost.

Dawn Koepke, lobbyist for Crime Victims United of California, said ending death sentences retroactively would be “an insult” to victims whose killers are on death row. She said such a bill would tell victims' that “the cost of their life is not as sufficient and important as the cost to the state.”

She listed prominent murder victims whose families have been awaiting the closure provided by executions.

“I have a problem with saying that taking away this punishment will not do anything,” said Assemblyman Steve Knight, R-Lancaster, a former police officer who voted against the bill. “The death penalty is a deterrent. It is. And it does have that effect on some people.”

To contact Staff Writer Kyle Magin, e-mail kmagin@theunion.com or call (530) 477-4239.