California suspends executions with 740 prisoners sentenced to death – 13/03/2019

With 740 detainees waiting for their last hour on death row, the governor of California, Gavin Newsom, will declare this Wednesday a moratorium on executions in this American state

California has death row the most populous in the United States, with 740 prisoners, although it is one of the states with the lowest number of executions in the country, with a total of 13 (the last in 2006) since the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976 .

In addition to suspending the eventual execution of any of these prisoners, the Governor's decree will end the lethal injection protocol planned in the state and will order the closure of the execution hall of San Quintín prison, near San Francisco. This will also nullify the courts' legal efforts to approve new life-threatening injections.

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According to Amnesty International

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Newsom, a Democrat, must make this announcement to the California legislature in a speech stating that the death penalty has been "a failure".

"He has discriminated against mentally ill defendants, African Americans and Latinos, who can not afford a costly defense," said the governor, according to the speech leaked to local media.

"The death penalty is incompatible with our core values ​​and affects the heart of what it means to be a Californian."

Gavin Newsom

Governor of California

With this decision, California will join Pennsylvania, Oregon and Colorado as states with a moratorium on executions decreed by the governors, but with the death penalty in effect.

The people against

Newsom will therefore pull the result of up three referendums that in recent years have approved the death penalty in California.

In 2012 and 2016, the Californians rejected the proposals to abolish the death penalty and, in 2016, they also supported an initiative that included shorten the appeal process that a prisoner has the right to speed up the executions.

Despite the moratorium, courts can continue to sentence death new accused, who in this case will swell the death row.

And it is not expected that Newsom will use its power to commute the death sentences of the 740 people sentenced to death for life imprisonment.

Since the US Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, 1,493 prisoners have been executed throughout the country, the majority in the state of Texas (560), compared to 13 in California.

In October 2018, California had 740 out of 2,721 prisoners sentenced to death in the United States, or 27.2% of the total, more than double the number of prisoners in Florida, with 354.

Twenty of the fifty states of the Union have abolished the death penalty, which is still in force for the other thirty, in addition to the federal government and the armed forces.

Source: EFE and AFP

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