USA: Gov. Newsom to order halt to California’s death penalty

Gov. Gavin Newsom is suspending the death penalty in California, calling it discriminatory and immoral, and is granting reprieves to the 737 condemned inmates on the nation’s largest Death Row.

“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 in a statement accompanying an executive order, to be issued Wednesday, declaring a moratorium on capital punishment in the state. “The death penalty is inconsistent with our bedrock values and strikes at the very heart of what it means to be a Californian.”

He plans to order an immediate shutdown of the death chamber at San Quentin State Prison, where the last execution was carried out in 2006. Newsom is also withdrawing California’s recently revised procedures for executions by lethal injection, ending — at least for now — the struggle by prison officials for more than a decade to devise procedures that would pass muster in federal court by minimizing the risk of a botched and painful execution.

His actions, disclosed to The Chronicle by an administration source late Tuesday, come in the wake of a pair of close but unsuccessful efforts by death penalty opponents to repeal the state law at the ballot box. The initiatives, both endorsed by Newsom, garnered 48 percent of the vote in 2012 and 47 percent four years later, when supporters of capital punishment won passage of a rival initiative aimed at speeding up executions. While that measure has reduced review of the execution process in state courts, California’s lethal-injection procedures are still being scrutinized in federal court.

The governor lacks authority to change the state death penalty law, which was enacted by the voters in 1978 and can be repealed only at the ballot box.

Newsom, elected to a four-year term last November, did not say whether he would support another repeal initiative in 2020. But he said he would grant reprieves to anyone sentenced to death while he holds office.

“The intentional killing of another person is wrong,” he said. “And, as governor, I will not oversee the execution of any individual.”

Michele Hanisee, president of the Association of Deputy District Attorneys, criticized Newsom’s decision.

“The voters of the state of California support the death penalty,” she said. “That is powerfully demonstrated by their approval of Proposition 66 in 2016 to ensure the death penalty is implemented, and their rejection of measures to end the death penalty in 2016 and 2006. Gov. Newsom … is usurping the expressed will of California voters.”

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