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SACRAMENTO, Calif. (CA) – California's 737 California death row inmates have been granted a reprieve by Governor Gavin Newsom, who plans to sign a decree on Wednesday to impose a moratorium on executions.
Newsom is also withdrawing the lethal injection rules that opponents of the death penalty have already crammed into court and closing the new execution chamber of the state prison of San Quentin that no longer Has never been used.
"The intentional killing of another person is a mistake and, as governor, I will not supervise the execution of an individual," he said.
Newsom has called the death penalty "a failure" that "discriminated against mentally ill, black and brown defendants, or unable to afford expensive legal representation". He also stated that innocent people were wrongly sentenced and sometimes put to death.
California has not executed anyone since 2006, when Arnold Schwarzenegger was governor. And although the 2016 voters have narrowly approved a voting move to speed up the punishment, no convicted prisoner has been executed imminently.
Since the last execution in California, the number of death row prisoners sentenced in the United States is on death row. Scott Peterson, whose trial for the murder of his wife Laci triumphed over the country, and Richard Davis, who kidnapped 12-year-old Polly Klaas at a slumber party and strangled her .
Newsom "usurps the express will of California voters and substitutes personal preferences for this hasty and reckless moratorium on the death penalty," said Michele Hanisee, president of the District Attorney's Division in Los Angeles.
But Alison Parker, US director general of Human Rights Watch, praised the "great courage and leadership shown by Newsom to end the cruel, costly and unfair practice of executing prisoners," calling on the government. other states to follow the example of California. The American Civil Liberties Union has called it "a decisive moment in the struggle for racial equity and equal justice for all". Justin Brooks, director of the California Innocence Project, congratulated Newsom for putting an end to the risk of executing an innocent person.
Kent Scheidegger, legal director of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, who fought in court to force the state to resume executions, said that blocking the Newsom movement could be difficult.
"On the other hand, the governor has the power to do that, and that does not make it the right thing to do," said Scheidegger. "For the moment, I do not see a legal challenge to the stay." However, he stated that prohibiting prison officials from preparing to carry out executions "is patently illegal" under the 2016 ballot measure.
Stanislaus District Attorney Birgit Fladager, president of the California District Attorneys Association, also criticized Newsom for circumventing the will of a majority of voters.
But he had the support of Democratic lawmakers, including Sen. Scott Wiener of San Francisco and parliamentarian Lorena Gonzalez of San Diego, who congratulated Newsom for "doing the right thing, even when it's difficult." ", in the words of Gonzalez.
Aides said that Newsom's power to grant reparations is enshrined in the state's constitution and that it does not change any conviction or leave a convicted prisoner a chance of early release.
A governor must obtain the approval of the state Supreme Court to pardon or commute the sentence of any person convicted twice for crime, and the judges last year blocked several requests for pardon from former governor Jerry Brown that did not involve convicts.
Other governors have also adopted moratoriums. The Republican Governor of Illinois, George Ryan, was first in 2000 and was followed by Pennsylvania, Washington State and Oregon. Illinois has finally banned executions, like Washington.
Newsom said that the death penalty was not a deterrent, that it was wasting taxpayers' money and that it was flawed because it is "irreversible and irreparable in case of". human error". It's also expensive: California has spent $ 5 billion since 1978 on death row, he said.
More than six out of ten convicted Californian prisoners are minorities, which his office has cited as evidence of racial disparities between those sentenced to death. Since 1973, five California prisoners sentenced to death have been exonerated, his office said.
Brown also opposed the death penalty, but his administration decided to resume executions after voters acted in 2016 to allow the use of a single lethal injection and speed up appeals . The regulations of his administration are stalled by challenges in state and federal courts, although these lawsuits may be suspended now that Newsom is in the process of officially withdrawing them.
Brown said he was satisfied with his record number of pardons and commutations, although he had never tried commuting a death sentence. It focused on radical changes in criminal sanctions and the reduction of the prison population.
"I did what I wanted to do," Brown said shortly before leaving office, defending his decision not to approve the efforts to repeal the death penalty in 2012 and 2016. " I've concocted my part of it all. "
Democrat MP Marc Levine, of Greenbrae, plans to get the two-thirds vote required by the legislature to implement another repeal measure in the vote for 2020. The Levine District includes the prison of State of San Quentin. A repeal issue also appeared on the ballot in 2016, with the goal of speeding up the executions. He lost 7 points while the other question was approved by 2 points.
Newsom staff stated that the fate of the execution chamber was not yet determined, nor was it clear whether the prison authorities were asked to prepare for the executions, for example by organizing exercises.
Seventy-nine convicted Californian detainees have died of natural causes since the state reinstated the death penalty in 1978. Twenty-six others committed suicide. California executed 13 inmates, while two were executed in other states.
Newsom's office said that 25 convicts had exhausted all their appeals and could have been executed if the courts had approved the state's new method of lethal injection.
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Associated Press reporter Kathleen Ronayne contributed to this story.
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