CA Gov. Newsom put a moratorium on the death penalty and repudiated

Governor Gavin Newsom puts in place a moratorium on the death penalty in California, preserving the lives of more than 700 people on death row.

Newsom plans to sign an executive order Wednesday morning granting reparations to all 737 Californians awaiting execution – a quarter of the country's death row inmates.

The action comes three years after California voters rejected an initiative to end the death penalty, instead adopting a measure to speed up executions.

Newsom says that the death penalty system has discriminated against mentally ill and colored people. This has not made the state any safer and has wasted billions of taxpayer dollars, according to prepared remarks, that Newsom plans to deliver Wednesday morning when it will sign the order.

"Our death penalty system has been – in all respects, a failure," Newsom said. "The intentional killing of another person is a mistake. And as a governor, I will not supervise the execution of an individual. "

California has not executed anyone for more than a decade because of legal challenges to the state's enforcement protocol. But the executions of more than 20 detainees having exhausted their appeals could have resumed if these difficulties were resolved and Newsom said he feared that this would happen soon.

Newsom is a long-time opponent of the death penalty. While campaigning for a measure to repeal the death penalty in 2016, he told Modesto Bee's editorial board that he "would be responsible for the will of voters" when he was elected governor.

"I would not want my personal opinions to compromise the right of the public to decide where he wants to take us" on the death penalty, he said.

The moratorium will be in force for the duration of the mandate of Newsom, announced the office of the governor. After that, a future governor could decide to resume executions.

California is one of 31 states of capital punishment. In recent years, other states have abolished the death penalty and several other governors have imposed moratoriums on executions. The California Constitution gives the governor the power to grant deportation to inmates, provided he sets out his reasoning in the Legislative Assembly.

But Newsom's action will anger the supporters of the death penalty.

"Voters in the state of California support the death penalty. This is clearly demonstrated by their approval of Proposition 66 in 2016 to ensure the implementation of the death penalty and their rejection of measures to end the death penalty in 2016 and 2006, said Michele Hanisee, President of the Association of Assistant District Attorneys, in a statement Tuesday night.

Governor Newsom, who supported the failure of the 2006 death penalty initiative, usurps the express will of California voters and substitutes his personal preferences for this hasty and reckless moratorium on the death penalty."

Kent Scheidegger, a supporter of the death penalty, told The Bee, in an interview granted earlier this month, that it was abusive to prevent executions by an action in White. The governor's leniency powers are aimed at correcting individual cases of injustice, said Scheidegger, legal director of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation.

"This is not supposed to be a weapon to block law enforcement that the population has adopted simply because the governor disagrees with it," Scheidegger said.

In addition to the moratorium, Newsom's order will also remove California's legal injunction and close the San Quentin execution room, where all death row inmates are jailed. Those sentenced to death will remain in prison in accordance with the order.

His order also indicates the 164 people who were released from death row after being convicted wrongfully.

It follows the first Newsom action related to a leniency application last month, when he ordered additional DNA testing in the case of death row convict Kevin Cooper.

Last month, Newsom had told the press that the prospect of a resumption of executions was threatening him.

"I have never believed in the death penalty from a moral point of view," he said. "The disparities are really real and raw for me now, as I spend each week working on parole issues and commutations and, in concrete terms, I see these disparities."