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California Governor Gavin Newsom announced Wednesday a moratorium on the death penalty, ending more than 700 executions in the state.
According to the governor's office, the executive order grants a reprieve to 737 detainees on the country's largest death row and puts an end to the application of the death penalty in the state .
"I do not believe that a civilized society can claim to be a leader in the world as long as its government continues to sanction the premeditated and discriminatory execution of its people," Newsom said Wednesday in a prepared statement. "In short, the death penalty is incompatible with our core values and strikes at the heart of what it means to be a Californian."
The Associated Press
This decision is particularly controversial as California voters rejected a vote that would have repealed the death penalty in 2016.
Newsom, who said he wanted to take action on the issue when he took office, cited high costs, racial inequality and lack of deterrence as justification for his decision.
"He discriminated against defendants with mental illness, black and brown, or unable to afford expensive legal representation," Newsom said. "It has not provided any public safety benefit or deterrent value.
"But above all, the death penalty is absolute, irreversible and irreparable in case of human error," he added, adding that the state had spent $ 5 billion since 1978 to keep convicts to death.
Rich Pedroncelli / AP, FILE
Newsom, a Democrat, said he was not issuing any commutations for convicts. The last execution of California goes back to 2006, under the governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.
The executive order will also close the execution chamber at San Quentin State Prison, which has never been used, and withdraw California's lethal injection protocol.
Sharon Sellitto, the victim's lawyer, whose brother, Paul Cosner, is presumed to be murdering serial murderers Charles Ng and Leonard Lake, told ABC that she was "torn apart" by the governor's decision.
"This is not the judge, nor the jury and he was not at trial," Sellitto told ABC News during a telephone interview Tuesday night. "He should be concerned with the victims, not the perpetrators."
Sellitto said she had received a phone call Tuesday night from the Survivors 'and Survivors' Services Office of the Department of Corrections, informing him of the governor's announcement and providing him with a contact in her office if she wanted to talk to anyone about her past. decision.
The Associated Press
"Horrible, just horrible," she said. "No one should use the word" justice "in my presence again."
Mike Semanchik, general counsel for the California Innocence Project – which exonerates those sentenced to death – welcomed the decision.
"Conservative estimates suggest that 4% of death row inmates are innocent.This conservative estimate means that 29 out of 737 people are waiting to be executed for a crime they did not commit," tweeted Wednesday. "Thank you, Gavin Newsom, for eliminating the risk of executing innocents!"
"I had dreamed for many years of ending the human rights violation known as the death penalty in California," said Justin Brooks, director of the California Innocence Project and a professor at California Western School. of Law. "It is certain that as long as the death penalty subsists, there will be a risk of executing innocent people.I am proud of our new governor who took this bold step."
Kim Kardashian West, who advocates for criminal justice reform and has successfully pressured President Donald Trump to commute the life sentence of a Tennessee woman, said she was "very favorable "to the decision of the governor.
I have met and am very supportive of Governor Newsom and his decision to help end the death penalty in California. Racial prejudice and injustice are deeply embedded in the justice system, but particularly with respect to the death penalty.
– Kim Kardashian West (@KimKardashian) March 13, 2019
And we should not accept the risk that an innocent person will be executed. I hope that we can turn to better solutions that place greater emphasis on the healing of trauma victims and on the priority given to equity and justice.
– Kim Kardashian West (@KimKardashian) March 13, 2019
Criminal justice experts said Newsom's decision would likely be challenged in court.
The Assistant District Attorney's Association, which represents approximately 1,000 district attorneys in Los Angeles County, described the decision as "hasty and reckless".
"Voters in the state of California are supportive of the death penalty," said Tuesday the president of the association, Michele Hanisee, in a statement, amid rumors about the governor's decision. 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"
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