Yahoo News California stops executions as more than 700 death row inmates get reprieve
Hundreds of inmates on the largest death row in the United States are getting a reprieve as a halt is set to be placed on all executions in California.
State governor Gavin Newsom plans to sign an executive order placing a moratorium on executions, and is also withdrawing the lethal injection regulations that death penalty opponents already have tied up in courts.
The moratorium will affect 737 inmates on death row.
Mr Newsom said: “The intentional killing of another person is wrong and as governor, I will not oversee the execution of any individual.”
He called the death penalty “a failure” that “has discriminated against defendants who are mentally ill, black and brown, or can’t afford expensive legal representation”.
The governor also said innocent people had been wrongly convicted and sometimes put to death.
Mr Newsom said the death penalty was not a deterrent, wasted taxpayer dollars and was flawed because it is “irreversible and irreparable in the event of human error”.
The death penalty has been an abject failure. It discriminates based on the color of your skin or how much money you make. It’s ineffective, irreversible, and immoral. It goes against the very values that we stand for — which is why CA is putting a stop to this failed system.
— Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) 13 March 2019
California has not executed anyone since 2006, when Arnold Schwarzenegger was governor.
And although voters in 2016 narrowly approved a ballot measure to speed up the punishment, no condemned inmate faced imminent execution.
Since California’s last execution, its death row population has grown to house one of every four condemned inmates in the United States.
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They include Scott Peterson, whose trial for killing his wife Laci riveted the country, and Richard Davis, who kidnapped 12-year-old Polly Klaas during a slumber party and strangled her.
Michele Hanisee, president of the Association of Deputy (Los Angeles County) District Attorneys, said Mr Newsom “is usurping the express will of California voters and substituting his personal preferences via this hasty and ill-considered moratorium on the death penalty.
While the governor’s move is certain to be challenged in court, aides say his power to grant reprieves is written into the state constitution and that he is not altering any convictions or allowing any condemned inmate a chance at an early release.
A governor needs approval from the state Supreme Court to pardon or commute the sentence of anyone twice convicted of a felony, and the justices last year blocked several clemency requests by former governor Jerry Brown that did not involve condemned inmates.
Other governors also have enacted moratoriums. Republican Illinois Governor George Ryan was the first in 2000 and was later followed by Pennsylvania, Washington and Oregon. Illinois ultimately outlawed executions, as did Washington.
More than six in 10 condemned California inmates are minorities, which Mr Newsom’s office cited as proof of racial disparities in who is sentenced to die.
Since 1973, five California inmates who were sentenced to death were later exonerated, his office said.
Seventy-nine condemned California inmates have died of natural causes since the state reinstated capital punishment in 1978. Another 26 committed suicide. California has executed 13 inmates, while two were executed in other states.
Mr Newsom’s office said 25 condemned inmates have exhausted all of their appeals and could have faced execution if the courts approved the state’s new lethal injection method.
