Governor Gavin Newsom to Order a Moratorium on the Death Penalty: NPR

California governor Gavin Newsom will sign a general order on Wednesday imposing a moratorium on the death penalty in California, ordering a stay of 737 death row inmates.

The action suspends all executions in California until Newsom is governor, his office announced. But only California voters can abolish the death penalty, which they narrowly rejected three years ago.

The governor's office stated that the order of Newsom would immediately close the execution chamber of San Quentin prison, but would not change existing convictions or sentences, and would result in the release of No one sentenced to death.

"Our death penalty system has been – in all points of view, a failure," Newsom said in a written statement. "He has not provided any benefit or value of public security as a deterrent, he has wasted billions of taxpayers' dollars, but most of all, the death penalty is absolute, irreversible and irreparable in case of death." ;human error."

The decree will also specify that the death penalty is inherently unfair – applied more often to people of color and those with intellectual disabilities, according to a source from the administration.

An upgrade of $ 853,000 from the San Quentin Execution Chamber was completed in 2010, but it has never been used. The last execution in California occurred on January 17, 2006, when Clarence Ray Allen, aged 76, was put to death. No execution has been performed since.

A moratorium on court-ordered executions has been in effect since February 2006, when a federal judge said California's deadly injection protocol was unconstitutional. A new protocol of execution is being revised, but the order of Newsom will remove it.

California's public opinion on capital punishment has evolved considerably in recent decades, with more and more people choosing to live life without the possibility of parole in most cases.

However, in 2012 and again in 2016, California voters rejected voting measures to abolish the death penalty. In 2016, after narrowly rejecting Proposition 62, voters restrictively adopted a concurrent measure, Proposition 66, to speed up executions by shortening the appeal process. The California Supreme Court rejected part of this measure, leaving it intact.

Newsom's action on the death penalty will undoubtedly put it in the limelight of the national scene. What might have seemed avant-garde decades ago is no longer: the governors of Colorado, Oregon and Washington State have imposed moratoriums on the latter's executions years.

Eighteen more states and the District of Columbia have abolished the death penalty.

Nevertheless, Newsom's action is the latest indication of how California's policy has changed with respect to capital punishment.

In 1986, voters essentially recalled California Chief Justice Rose Bird and two other deputy Supreme Court justices appointed by former Gov. Jerry Brown for their opposition to the death penalty.

They were replaced by Brown's successor, Republican Republican Governor George Deukmejian, a former Attorney General who oversaw a vast expansion of California's penitentiary system before leaving the governor's office in 1991.

In 1990, Dianne Feinstein was a candidate for the governor's candidacy as a democrat in favor of the death penalty, views that were conspired against the Democratic State Convention that year. She nevertheless won the nomination of her party, losing to Republican Pete Wilson in the general election of the same year.

In 1998, Democratic nominee Gray Davis also defended the death penalty, easily crushing Republican Attorney General Dan Lungren in the general election.

But as the demographics of the state has changed, California's politics has also changed. In 2006, Jerry Brown was elected Attorney General and promised to maintain the death penalty, although he personally opposed it. Four years later, Kamala Harris, District Attorney for San Francisco, a staunch opponent of the death penalty, was narrowly elected Attorney General.

Today, it is difficult to find a traditional California Democrat who supports the death penalty. As for Newsom, highlighting the problem could raise its national profile, but could also trigger a storm of protests from advocates for the victims of crime, President Trump and others.

This seems to be a risk that he is willing, if not happy, to take.