California Court Rejects Challenge to Execution Moratorium

A California tri­al court has dis­missed a law­suit filed by con­ser­v­a­tive media com­men­ta­tor John V. Lacy that had chal­lenged the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the March 2019 exec­u­tive order by Governor Gavin Newsom (pic­tured) declar­ing a mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions in the state. 

In orders issued on August 31, 2021, the Sacramento Superior Court denied Lacy’s motion to strike down Newsom’s mora­to­ri­um for alleged­ly exceed­ing his author­i­ty under the California con­sti­tu­tion and grant­ed Newsom’s motion to dis­miss Lacy’s suit. The court found that Lacy had failed to show that he ​“sus­tained or is imme­di­ate­ly in dan­ger of sus­tain­ing some direct injury” from the exe­cu­tion mora­to­ri­um or that the mora­to­ri­um dec­la­ra­tion had vio­lat­ed ​“a min­is­te­r­i­al duty” that Newsom and the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation were ​“required to be per­formed in a pre­scribed man­ner.” Accordingly, the court said, Lacy lacked stand­ing to sue. 

Lacy, a for­mer co-chair of the annu­al Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) con­fer­ence in Washington, D.C. and a co-host of the radio pro­gram Live in Taxifornia, has described sup­port­ers of the mora­to­ri­um as ​“the pro­gres­sive pro-crim­i­nal crowd” and assert­ed that ​“the media prais­es cop killers and pro­motes defund­ing the police.” He claimed that his repeat­ed votes ​“for ini­tia­tive mea­sures that would con­tin­ue cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in the state and against mea­sures that would reduce or elim­i­nate it” con­ferred upon him per­son­al stand­ing to chal­lenge the mora­to­ri­um. Newsom argued that Lacy had alleged noth­ing more than ​“per­son­al dis­sat­is­fac­tion with the Governor’s actions” and had no legal basis to sue.

The California con­sti­tu­tion grants the gov­er­nor the pow­ers of reprieve, par­don, and com­mu­ta­tion. Newsom’s order declared an ​“exec­u­tive mora­to­ri­um on the death penal­ty … in the form of a reprieve for all peo­ple sen­tenced to death in California.” Having deter­mined that Lacy lacked stand­ing to sue, the court ​“decline[d] to rule on the under­ly­ing con­sti­tu­tion­al argu­ment that would be addressed if [Lacy] had standing.”