California Governor Gavin Newsom on March 13, 2019 declared a mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions in the state with the nation’s largest death row. Newsom imple­ment­ed the mora­to­ri­um through an exec­u­tive order grant­i­ng reprieves to the 737 pris­on­ers cur­rent­ly on California’s death row. He also announced that he was with­draw­ing the state’s exe­cu­tion pro­to­col — the admin­is­tra­tive plan by which exe­cu­tions are car­ried out — and was clos­ing down the state’s exe­cu­tion cham­ber. In his exec­u­tive order impos­ing the mora­to­ri­um, Newsom said, ​“I will not over­see the exe­cu­tion of any per­son while Governor.”

With the governor’s announce­ment, California joins Colorado, Oregon, and Pennsylvania as states in which gov­er­nors have imposed mora­to­ria on exe­cu­tions, mean­ing that more than one-third (34.1%) of all death-row pris­on­ers in the U.S. are now incar­cer­at­ed in states in which gov­er­nors have said no exe­cu­tions will occur. As a result of legal chal­lenges to the state’s exe­cu­tion pro­to­col and appeals chal­leng­ing the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the state’s death-penal­ty sys­tem, California has not car­ried out an exe­cu­tion since 2006. ​“Our death penal­ty sys­tem has been, by all mea­sures, a fail­ure,” Newsom said in a state­ment accom­pa­ny­ing his mora­to­ri­um dec­la­ra­tion. ​“It has dis­crim­i­nat­ed against defen­dants who are men­tal­ly ill, black and brown, or can’t afford expen­sive legal rep­re­sen­ta­tion. It has pro­vid­ed no pub­lic safe­ty ben­e­fit or val­ue as a deter­rent. It has wast­ed bil­lions of tax­pay­er dol­lars. But most of all, the death penal­ty is absolute. It’s irre­versible and irrepara­ble in the event of human error.”

Despite the large num­ber of death sen­tences in California, the state has con­duct­ed only 13 exe­cu­tions since rein­tro­duc­ing the death penal­ty in 1978. A 2011 study esti­mat­ed the state had spent more than $4 bil­lion on death penal­ty tri­als, appeals, and incar­cer­a­tion, and esti­mat­ed an annu­al sav­ings of $170 mil­lion if the death penal­ty were abol­ished. In his exec­u­tive order, the gov­er­nor said that the cost has since risen to $5 bil­lion. In his remarks at the news con­fer­ence, Newsom said that 164 wrong­ly con­vict­ed pris­on­ers have already been exon­er­at­ed from U.S. death rows since 1973, and an esti­mat­ed 30 inno­cent pris­on­ers may be among those still sen­tenced to death in California. In 2012 and 2016, vot­ers nar­row­ly reject­ed ref­er­en­da that would have abol­ished cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. In 2016, a vot­er ref­er­en­dum intend­ed to speed up exe­cu­tions by lim­it­ing appeals passed by a two-per­cent­age point mar­gin. That mea­sure, Proposition 66, was upheld but cur­tailed by a 2017 California Supreme Court deci­sion.

Governor Newsom fol­lows the lead of gov­er­nors in three oth­er Western U.S. states who have imposed mora­to­ria on exe­cu­tions in the last decade. Governors John Kitzhaber of Oregon (November 2011), John Hickenlooper of Colorado (May 2013), and Jay Inslee of Washington (January 2014) halt­ed exe­cu­tions in their states, and Kate Brown of Oregon announced in February 2015 that she would extend the exist­ing mora­to­ri­um. Washington’s supreme court struck down the death penal­ty in October 2018 on grounds of geo­graph­ic arbi­trari­ness and racial bias, mak­ing it the 20th state to abol­ish the death penal­ty. Legislators in Colorado and Oregon are con­sid­er­ing bills to abol­ish or seri­ous­ly restrict the death penal­ty, and a Republican-backed bill to repeal the death penal­ty passed the Wyoming state House and a Senate com­mit­tee ear­li­er this year before fail­ing in a vote before the full Senate. No state west of Texas car­ried out any exe­cu­tions in 2018, and those states col­lec­tive­ly imposed the fewest new death sen­tences since California brought back cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in 1978. Newsom said “[t]he inten­tion­al killing of anoth­er per­son is wrong” and that his mora­to­ri­um was a first step towards the ulti­mate goal of end­ing the death penal­ty in California.

(Office of the Governor Gavin Newsom, Governor Gavin Newsom Orders a Halt to the Death Penalty in California, March 13, 2019; Allison Elyse Gualtieri, California gov­er­nor to halt exe­cu­tions, Washington Examiner, March 13, 2019; Phil Willon, Gov. Gavin Newsom to block California death row exe­cu­tions, close San Quentin exe­cu­tion cham­ber, Los Angeles Times, March 12, 2019.) Watch Governor Newsom’s news con­fer­ence and read the Death Penalty Information Center’s press release about the mora­to­ri­um dec­la­ra­tion. See States With and Without the Death Penalty.

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