As Californian voters weigh on whether to support Proposition 34 on Election Day, a survey that says the state leads the United States in wrongful convictions alarms the public.

Proposition 34 will repeal death penalty and replace it with life imprisonment without possibility of parole. It applies retroactively to existing death sentences.

Supporters of the proposition argue that making killers work and pay court-ordered restitution to victims, the proposition saves wasted tax dollars and directs 100 million U.S. dollars to law enforcement to solve rapes and murders.

While opponents say California is broke. Proposition 34 costs taxpayers 100 million dollars over four years and many millions more in the long term. Taxpayers would pay at least 50,000 dollars annually, giving lifetime healthcare and housing to each killer who tortured, raped, and murdered people.

But many Californians are shocked to see a new survey which finds that at least 200 wrongful convictions have been thrown out since 1989 in the state, costing those convicted more than 1,300 years of freedom and taxpayers 129 million dollars.

This figure does not yet include the costs of legal representation and court proceedings necessary to overturn the convictions, an amount expected to be substantial given the multiple trials and years of appeals routinely undertaken by wrongfully convicted individuals.

According to the survey, California leads the nation in exonerations as defined by the National Registry of Exonerations with 120, surpassing Illinois (110), Texas (100), and New York (100). The National Registry requires a post-conviction showing of new evidence for inclusion.

Since 1989, courts have exonerated or dismissed convictions against 214 Californians. Reasons include official misconduct, insufficient evidence, findings of innocence, ineffective defense, and legal error, the survey says.

The survey also finds 40 percent of individuals in the dataset were initially sentenced to 20 years or more in prison, including many who received life, life without parole, or death sentences before their convictions were overturned.

"This data shows that both inadvertent mistakes and deliberate misconduct are more common in our criminal justice system than most people think," said John Hollway, founder of Hollway Advisory Services.

"We are seeing prosecutors and defense attorneys work hand in hand to reduce these errors. A systemic review of the mistakes will allow us to measure the frequency and costs of justice system flaws, especially in this era of prison overcrowding and cost overruns. We want to prioritize reforms to reduce wrongful convictions and their significant cost to taxpayers," Hollway added.

Franky Carrillo, exonerated of murder after 20 years in prison, wrote in his blog that he was locked up more than 20 years ago for a murder he did not commit and he was finally able to prove his innocence and was released last year.

"I know first-hand that innocent men and women can be convicted of terrible things they had nothing to do with, and that the death penalty always will run the awful risk of executing one of those people. It could have been me," Carrillo wrote.