I am surprise CA even has the death penalty

California Death Penalty Suspended; 737 Inmates Get Stay of Execution

Sure, not all Democrats oppose capital punishment. But still.

Gov. Gavin Newsom announced a moratorium on capital punishment on Wednesday, granting a temporary reprieve for the 737 inmates on the state’s death row, the largest in the Western Hemisphere.

The move is highly symbolic because legal challenges have already stalled executions in California; the last one was in 2006. 

But death penalty opponents hope that because of California’s size and political importance, the governor’s action will give new urgency to efforts to end executions in other states as popular support for the death penalty wanes.

Mr. Newsom, a longtime opponent of capital punishment, cited its high cost, racial disparities in its application and wrongful convictions, and questioned whether society has the right to take a life.

“I know people think eye for eye, but if you rape, we don’t rape,” he said. “And I think if someone kills, we don’t kill. We’re better than that.”

He continued, “I cannot sign off on executing hundreds and hundreds of human beings, knowing — knowing — that among them will be innocent human beings.”


Supporters of capital punishment said the move went against the will of the state’s residents. California voters have rejected an initiative to abolish the death penalty and in 2016, they narrowly approved Proposition 66 to help speed it up.

“I think this would be a bold step and I think he’s got to be aware of the political downside,” said Michael D. Rushford, president of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, an organization in Sacramento that favors the death penalty and helped draft the ballot proposition, speaking before the governor’s announcement. 

“Voters have had multiple opportunities in California over three decades to abandon the death penalty and they’ve shut them down at every chance.”

. . . .

After the news of Mr. Newsom’s decision broke, Mr. Trump said on Twitter: “Defying voters, the Governor of California will halt all death penalty executions of 737 stone cold killers. 

"Friends and families of the always forgotten VICTIMS are not thrilled, and neither am I!”

. . . .

An executive order Mr. Newsom signed on Wednesday does three things: grants reprieves to the inmates currently on death row — they will still be under a death sentence, but not at risk of execution; closes the execution chamber at San Quentin prison; and withdraws the state’s lethal injection protocol, the formally approved procedure for carrying out executions.

. . . .

Supporters of the death penalty predicted legal challenges to any moratorium.

. . . .

Mr. Newsom’s move will surely be applauded by liberal activists, members of his own party and many conservatives, some of whom have come to see the death penalty as exorbitantly costly and have argued against it on economic grounds.

Three other governors — in Oregon, Colorado and Pennsylvania — have issued moratoriums on the death penalty. 

In other states, the practice has been abolished by either legislatures or courts. 

The latest was Washington, which last year became the 20th state to end capital punishment when the State Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional, after a moratorium issued by the governor.

. . . .

California governors are limited in their power to commute sentences, but they do have the power to issue temporary reprieves. 

A moratorium, said Stefanie Faucher of the 8th Amendment Project, an organization that opposes capital punishment, is “functionally a series of reprieves.”

In order to commute death sentences to life in prison for death row inmates that have a prior felony, which many do, Mr. Newsom would need approval from the California Supreme Court.

. . . .

Opponents of the death penalty, including Mr. Newsom, have long argued that the practice is rife with racial disparities and is not justified by the high cost to state taxpayers. 

One study, in 2011, found that California pays $184 million a year to sustain capital punishment — or close to an accumulated $5 billion since the practice was reinstituted in 1978.